The Newcomers (Alien Nation): District 9's aliens are most often compared to the Tenctonese, better known as the Newcomers. Like the D9 aliens, the Newcomers just can't catch a break. After fleeing from slavery on their own planet, a quarter of a million Newcomers land in Los Angeles to find a sometimes less than welcoming human population. Aside from the unfortunate names some INS officials assign the new arrivals (in the original movie, Matt Sykes' partner was named "Sam Francisco"), there are anti-alien Purists who think the Tenctonese should have stayed on Tencton, and plenty of murder, both from humans looking to eradicated the Newcomers and from those who would harvest their life-extending glands.

The Citizens of the Dominion (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): With all of its explorations of race and morality, the Star Trek universe has had its fair share of oppressed species: the Troglyte miners who served their fellow Ardanans, the Romulans' Reman slaves, the Orion women (who only appear to be slaves), the Tosk who serve as prey for the Hunters' sport, the Bajorans who endure 50 years of Cardassian occupation, and, of course, anyone who encounters the Borg. But the Founders of the Dominion have a special talent for oppression, from engineering the supersoldier Jem'Hadar with an innate addiction to the drug ketracel white to infecting the Trevean with a congenital blight. Even the Vorta, who serve as the Dominion's middle managers, are mere slaves to the Founders, and are compelled to commit suicide if it serves their masters' purposes.

Clone Troopers (Star Wars): Slavery runs rampant in the Galactic Empire, with the Empire itself enslaving species like the Wookiees and the Mon Calamari wholesale, and some races, like the Twi'leks, would sell their own children into slavery in hopes of offering them a better life. And biological species buy and sell sentient droids (and ban them from their bars) without a second thought. But the genetically engineered (though otherwise human) Clone Troopers hold a special place among Star Wars' oppressed beings. Not only are they specifically grown for compulsory military service, they are essentially the property of the Galactic Republic, a government that has supposedly outlawed slavery.

The Ood (Doctor Who): Humans looking to have their own sentient slave without the guilt were told they could pick up an Ood servant with minimal damage to the conscience. After all, the Ood live to serve, right? Nothing in the Doctor's universe is ever so easy, and Donna and the Doctor soon discover that Ood Operations, the company supplying the alien servants, had cut off the Ood's telepathic link to the Ood brain, hampering their free will and leaving them to mix drinks and do laundry for their human masters.

Banik (Farscape): Oppression is a fairly widespread characteristic of the Farscape universe. Pretty much anyone living under Peacekeeper rule has a few humanoid rights trampled on (including the Peacekeepers themselves), and Scarrans have a pair of servant races who provide them with soldiers, intelligence agents, and technicians. But the Baniks hold an especially low place in the Farscape hierarchy. Having been mostly wiped out by Peacekeeper forces, the remaining Baniks have been enslaved, and the Banik Stark is repeatedly subjected to Scorpius' Aurora Chair, a torture and interrogation device. But the casual disregard for the lives of Baniks reaches its most shocking low when Scorpius purchases a lot of slaves that includes 9,999 Baniks and D'Argo's son Jothee. After he purchases the lot, Scorpius hands the slaves over to Natira, who, having no use for them, simply exterminates them all.

Sewer Mutants (Futurama): The 31st Century has little respect for humanoid or alien life, but at least most life forms are afforded the common courtesy of being able to walk the Earth's surface. Sewer mutants have no such privileges, requiring special permission to leave the subterranean ruins of New York. Sewer mutants, in turn, stick it to the sub-mutants, who are relegated to the sub-sewer (probably New York's original sewer system).

House Elves (Harry Potter): House Elves are powerful magical beings, with the ability to repel some of the most powerful wizards to come out of Hogwarts. But most of their magic goes toward serving their often less than noble wizard masters. House Elves are compelled to punish themselves if they disobey their masters or even utter an unkind word against them, and at least one ancient wizarding family held onto a gruesome tradition of decapitating elderly House Elves, then mounting their stuffed heads on the wall.

Dracs (Enemy Mine): Humans and Dracs are in the midst of a bitter war, so it's little surprise that the humans tolerate scavengers who capture Dracs for slave labor. But it also helps a brutal set of outlaws thrive without concern for human laws or Drac life.

Denizens of the Kzinti Empire (Known Space): The Kzinti began their lives in the galactic community as mercenaries, but once their Jotok clients taught them to use their weapons and technology, the Kzinti quickly turned on them, enslaving their former employers. From there, the Kzinti spread out across the galaxy, enslaving or eating any species they encountered. Although some subject worlds were more or less ignored by the Kzinti, some species were pushed off their worlds entirely, and breaking Kzinti law meant execution by hunting (usually followed by a feast featuring the accused as the main course). Even Kzin females, termed Kzinretti, are oppressed by their males, having been rendered subsapient by the hijacked Jotok technology.

Vortigaunt (Half-Life): Vortigaunts are the slaves of slaves, used by the Nihilanth as military forces or as factory workers. Although their enslavement forces the Vortigaunt to oppose Gordon Freeman in the first game, they get a bit of a happy ending when Freeman kills the Nihilanth. Once freed of their extradimensional masters, the Vortigaunts seek to keep humanity from falling to a similar fate, working against the Combine forces.

Neosapiens (Exosquad): Artificially created for life as laborers on Mars, the Neosapiens are stronger and faster than Terran humans, require little food and no sleep, and have a longer natural lifespan than their masters. You would think humans might think twice before creating such a physically advanced race only to enslave them, but they have to deal with the consequences in the ensuing rebellions. But the Neosapiens were not above creating servants of their own, engineering the animalistic Neo Warriors to serve as the Neosapiens' ground forces.

Mutants (X-Men): "Have you tried not being a mutant?" The classic line from X2 pretty much says it all. It's bad enough that the mutants have to cope with powers they don't always fully understand, or that their lives are punctuated by the occasional supervillain attack or alien invasion; they also have to cope with humans who hate and fear them, and religious fanatics who see them as an affront to God.

Cylons (Battlestar Galactica): Artificial beings have been oppressed by humans since Karel Čapek's R.U.R. premiered, and they've been turning on their masters just as long. The Cylons get bonus points, not because the nature of their oppression is unique, but because they're simultaneously portrayed as essentially human and yet dehumanized by their human enemies. Even forgetting racial slurs like "toaster" and "skin job" used to remind humans that their fleshier foes still have robot parts, there are some in the Colonial Fleet, like the rapist members of the Pegasus crew, who are inclined to treat the humanoid Cylons as warm-bodied objects. And the Cylons continue the cycle of oppression, with the humanoid Cylons effectively lobotomizing the Centurions and treating the Raiders as glorified pets.

Humans: Humans are the oppressed species nearly as often as they are the oppressors. Sometimes, we're enslaved by our own creations, as in the Matrix trilogy. Sometimes we've simply lost out as the dominant species of the planet, as in Planet of the Apes. Sometimes an alien invader simply decides we'll make good slaves, as in Stargate or Battlefield Earth. But we're a reliably plucky species, and even if we don't manage to pull ourselves out of the gutter, we don't make life easy for our oppressors.

I have to admit, I went into the movie expecting some kind of wonderful celebration of all things appalling, a sweet and pointless collection of camp and shit that would, at least, be enjoyably bad to watch. But it's not; at most, it's a Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie with a B-List star. But why explain? I'll just share my reactions while watching the movie with you:

-0:00: I think that Netflix is offering editorial commentary; it's taking forever to load, much longer than any other movie I've streamed from the site. It's as if the site is hoping that I'll get bored of looking at "34% Buffering" and give up.

0:00: Ten minutes later, finally, the movie starts. Apparently it's rated PG-13 for "Adult Language," and I'm already concerned that aliens shouldn't swear in human curses.

0:01: The aliens comes from a planet called "Psychlo"? Was "Evilkilleralienlo" taken?

0:05: Now that the insult "greener" has been used more than once, I am rethinking my stance on the use of real curse words. Although, perhaps if it was being used by real actors, I would feel differently.

0:06: The director of this movie has apparently gotten "suddenly switching to slow motion" with "making an interesting movie." That, or his cameras may have been broken during filming.

0:10: I love that they've just said "The grass is always greener on the other side" and "A good woman is hard to find" within a minute of each other - It's like the scriptwriters had just given up and were looking through a book of cliched proverbs in order to get the job done. And while I've been typing that, the aliens have appeared and kidnapped our hero and his two slacker loser buddies. More unexpected slow motion, of course.

0:17: Greener Kamandi (as I'm going to call him, I have no idea what his name is supposed to be) has killed an alien and escaped! It's almost exciting, but now that I can see the bad guys, I'm left wondering how much damage that Star Trek: The Next Generation did on alien make-up methods.

0:24: Wait, so this is all actually about alien office politics?

0:26: Wait, so this is all actually because John Travolta Alien slept with his boss' daughter? Is this some kind of strange and unusual attempt at comedy?

0:28: Aww, crap. Back to Greener Kamandi. I was enjoying John Travolta Alien's failure to get ahead in the world of corporate alien invasioning. Has someone re-edited this movie to take all the human scenes out? Do that, add a laugh track and some Mike Myers scenes where he's fat and farts and it's comedy genius, I'm telling you.

0:34: "Man-animals? Have you blown a head gasket?"

0:36: You can tell that the aliens are evil, because they've given the humans clothes. The bastards.

0:40: For those who've read the book this was based on, do they actually explain any of this stuff in the book? Like why the air is toxic, why the aliens are mining and all of that? I feel like they're rushing through all of that here and I don't really know what this movie's about, as a result.

0:46: This is a Sci-Fi Channel original movie, isn't it? I mean, the way it looks, the special effects, the acting, the whole thing. It's no worse - or better - than Mansquito or Raptor Island, and as much as I'd love to hate this more, I don't really get why people give it so much shit.

0:49: Why are humans capable of complex speech patterns having such trouble with mining?

0:50: The God Machine is a Knowledge Machine - Do you get it?

0:51: "See, I learned something called molecular biology." When they say things like that, I kind of like this movie.

0:57: The inspirational music when Greener Kamandi finds the Declaration of Independence is wonderful; I half expected Martin Sheen to walk in and declare that it was time to go to work.

0:58: I am such a great marksman, I can shoot cows. Great going, John Travolta Alien. Dude, cows are big and slow. I'm not sure what you're actually proving, here.

1:05: You can't fault this film for ambition; it clearly wants to be several different movies at once, including inspirational rebellion movie 101. It's like Braveheart with aliens, right now. And I say that as someone who hated Braveheart.

1:07: More weird sitcom stuff: John Travolta Alien's spy mistress is complaining that she was promised a big house back home. WTF?

1:11: See? Even aliens have video games. And they use them to train pilots, Last Starfighter-style!

1:18: You can tell that Greener Kamandi is learning; he's started tying his hair back. And what kind of alien invaders leave all the fighter jets lying around, just waiting to be used against them? These aliens DESERVE to have their asses kicked.

1:25: Even in the far-future, idiots are still called "patsies". It's good to know that some things never change.

1:30: Now the good stuff begins! A severed head and a hand shot off without any blood whatsoever! This is the kind of thing I was expecting all along! But sadly we're back to the humans already.

1:33: Even more slow-motion running and shooting. It's like Zack Snyder's father directed this movie or something.

1:35: It's like the ape riots in Conquest of The Planet Of The Apes Movie That I Can't Remember The Name Of, but somehow infinitely more boring. Although, now that the fighter jets have arrived, I have to ask, how can these people who couldn't mine correctly, suddenly fly planes?

1:37: Suddenly, it's Independence Day.

1:40: We're this far in, and I've only just realized that Greener Kamandi is actually called Johnny. Of course he is. They're always called Johnny.

1:46: "Where's the rest of my gold?" "I'll exchange it for my woman's life!" You just don't get dialogue like that these days. Or, at least, you shouldn't.

1:49: Johnny is the worst strategist ever: "If the other aliens come and try to kill us, then they'll hate you more and not kill us. As opposed to just kill you and us!"

1:51: Wait, that's it? It's over? But... but... My disappointment doesn't come from wanting the movie to continue. It's more the weird sense of anti-climax. I mean, it's not like this movie had the greatest story ever, but they're literally going to leave it with "And then they locked the alien up but had another alien free as the head Psychlo, but they're not telling us what that means. The end." I guess it's kind of old-fashioned in that way - just like it continually seemed like the movie was trying to be as Star Wars-esque as possible, with the screen wipe transitions and sub-John Williams-esque music - but it just makes the whole thing even more unsatisfying. I want some sense of closure, even from a movie as pointless as this, you know?

In the end, I don't get why this movie is so reviled. There are much worse movies out there; this is just not good, as opposed to appallingly bad. Were people really hoping for something better, and so disappoined that they started a new trend of hating on it? Or is there something I missed while Netflix buffered the hell out've it?

This used to be the point of the afternoon where I'd talk about the previous night's episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, or occasionally Batman: The Brave And The Bold. But both of those shows are off the air for awhile now - Clone Wars returns in the fall, and Brave and Bold in May - which led me to wonder what I should be doing with the time I normally spent watching and writing about them. And then I realized that you should tell me.

In Netflix's "Watch Instantly" area's sci-fi category, the following movies are listed as "new arrivals":
Frequency
Dragon Wars
Godzilla Vs. Destroyer/Space Godzilla
Battlefield Earth
Antibody
I've seen none of these movies before - No, not even Battlefield Earth - but you get to change that. Below, you can vote for the movie you want me to watch this week, and write about this time next week. Majority rules, unless someone makes a particularly compelling case for one of the movies in the comments (Or no-one votes, in which case you're getting Antibody. Dude, it's got Lance Henriksen being shrunk down and injected into a terrorist to save the world). All I ask is that you please be gentle. It's my first time, after all.

In this scene, social climber Travolta welcomes a higher up from the "Home Office," whom he hopes is about to transfer him to a nicer post. I just love the horrible acting here from actors who know better, plus the incredibly cheese effects and costumes. Of course, Travolta is about to find out that he's been assigned to Earth permanently for wronging a Senator's daughter. And the humans are about to revolt. The rest of the movie is filled with zany alien antics ala Home Alone, with the humans in the Macaulay Culkin role and the aliens as the bumbling thieves. Great flick to watch with the fast-forward button close at hand and your irony-colored glasses on. [Battlefield Earth via IMDB]

It's best to think of post-apocalyptic movies as "survival movies." There's never been a post-apocalyptic film where the global nightmare killed every single human — unless it was some 1960s avant-garde experiment showing an empty wasteland for two hours. The point of post-apocalyptic movies is that people do survive, even if they have to endure horrible things in the process.

In I Am Legend, we spend a lot of time admiring how well Will Smith has preserved normal life, including stir fried veggies and DVDs. Just like Heston's swinging pad in Omega Man, Smith's living space looks comfy, even luxurious. When I talked to I Am Legend production designer David Lazan, he mentioned that his goal with Will Smith's house was to make it look as much like a normal Washington Square townhouse as possible — until the shutters come down at night.

And the TV show Jericho is all about how the lucky Kansas town clings to domesticity in the face of the mass slaughter of half the United States. The show lingers lovingly over its characters' pristine kitchens and nice clothes, even as they indulge in the greatest luxury of all — petty soap-opera drama.

Part of the thrill of survival movies is witnessing the extreme stuff people have to do to remain alive. It's the same reason we love watching people eat bugs on Survivor, or kids terrorizing each other in the short-lived Kid Nation. When it's not being cozy, Jericho spends a lot of time lingering over the near-starvation of the townspeople and the frozen corpses they have to step over just outside of town.

A few things have changed since 2000, when the nastiest catastrophe to hit the world was John Travolta in a crappy headpiece. These days, the hardest thing is guessing which decaying-orbit bomb will hit us first. Climate crash, Krugmaniac economic collapse, terrorism, peak oil, wars, a nuclear North Korea, avian flu, etc. But more than that, it's increasingly clear that the early 21st. century way of life in America is unsustainable. We can't keep up our current level of energy use or foreign debt forever. It feels a lot like the 1970s, the last time huge disaster movies were this popular.

So we try to imagine what it could be like when the American empire falls and/or the globalized post-industrial economy collapses. And we look for stories that show how we might possibly salvage our asses in that situation.

But maybe there's another explanation: we actually want to tear down our world of maxi-corps, sprawl and environmental destruction. And we can't imagine any way that could happen other than through some kind of omni-fucking calamity.

(Note: Children of Men came out in the U.S. on Dec. 25, 2006, which means almost everybody here saw it in 2007.)

If you're not satisfied with Robin Williams' head, you can also get his eyes and arm (also from Bicentennial Man) as well as some sort of weird animatronic prop. Also on eBay:

• A ton of props from Southland Tales, including a belt worn by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Gellar's character's business card, an American flag, dog tags worn by Janeane Garofalo's soldier character and a wedding cake topper.
• A weird-ass tumbler that John Travolta drank out of in Battlefield Earth. Probably still coated in his saliva.
• A sign from the precog police station in Minority Report.
• A crew-member uniform from Star Trek: Generations You could wear it to a Halloween party. But instead you'll probably just keep it in an acid-free box and fondle it occasionally.
• The "tachyon admitter" the Fantastic Four used to separate the Silver Surfer from his surfboard in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
• Conference-room furniture from the Transformers movie. Just think, you could, ummm... use it in your conference room.
• A rubber pick-axe and crampons from Alien vs. Predator.
• A sign, in some alien script, from Ultraviolet.
• A zombie plague victim mask from Resident Evil: Extinction.