First of all, the script pages we managed to get copies of are "casting sides," which means they're used for audition purposes. But they appear to be actual pages from the episode, and we've got almost the entire script for this freaktacular outing into the world of "racing for pinks."

We start out in a bar. Michael Knight parks KITT (who looks unimpressive next to some of the fancy rides parked out front, causing a drunk guy to sneer) and goes inside, where his old army buddy Sean yells "Heads up" and throws a basketball at him. Sean heard Michael was dead, but he isn't, leading to a weird joke about "the guy they lost in basic training" who had to do the whole thing over again. Sean buys Michael a drink, but Sean himself is a teetotaler because of the terms of his parole.

Later, Sean and Mike are shooting hoops in a mechanical basketball game. Sean says he heard Mike went back to Iraq. Mike says he's done with the army... or it's done with him. Instead, Mike is racing again. This is shocking news for some reason. Sean thought Mike retired, but "the collection agencies didn't get the memo," Mike says. And he's heard there's a lot of money to be made racing. But Sean says it's hard to get in with the right crew. Finally, there's a coin toss, and I guess Mike wins, because Sean tells him: "You're in." It's apparently not that hard to break into competitive racing after all.

Then Mike gets his eye on the hottest girl in the bar, a 21-year-old wearing a miniskirt and 7-inch heels. (It says 7 inch. Really.) Apparently her name is "Celine the Ice Queen," and she's taken. But Mike says, "When has that ever mattered?" He uses his earpiece to contact KITT, who's about to be puked on by a drunk guy. KITT's "cylon eye wakes up." (The script actually says "cylon eye.") KITT scrolls through a menu: "Shock Level: 1-10" and selects "10." The drunk guy gets a hair-raising jolt before he can puke on the car's nice finish. "Sorry, Michael, I was interacting with one of the locals," KITT says.

Then KITT gets down to business: using his surveillance capabilities and database to get all the dirt on Celine the Ice Queen. She's a Libra and her favorite poet is Pablo Neruda. So Mike slides up to her and her "attitudinal girlfriends," and introduces herself. Celine says she's not interested. Mike tosses some negs: "Neither am I. I'm just trying to win a bet." His friend bet him that Celine is just one of those hotties who's totally superficial. But Mike bets there's more to that than that. Like... is she a Libra, by any chance? And as the poet Pablo Neruda said... And then Mike has to stall while KITT searches through his poetry database to find the single cheesiest line of Pablo Neruda's verse ever. The ice queen totally melts on him. Mike claims he did his grad school thesis on Neruda. Celine says he's not like the other guys, and he says that's because he's not from around here. He's here to race. "Driving fast is like poetry in motion." You could even say it's like Pablo Neruda... on hot wheels! This totally seals the deal with Celine. She tells Mike she can read minds too, and she knows what he's thinking. And the answer... is yes. Sweet! But then her boyfriend Ian shows up and "gets in Mike's grill."

Mike tries to be all friendly and invite Ian to have a beer and get to know each other. Ian's all like, "Maybe we'll become buds, take fishing trips together. Or maybe I'll just kick your ass." Ian takes a swing at Mike, but he gets the upper hand. Then Sean pulls out a shotgun and says "No fighting in the bar." And Ian's brother, Johnny Chang, shows up and tells them to get their rides set up. "That's the way we settle things out here: race for pinks." (Pinks = car registration?) A whoop goes up in the car. Sean tries to warn Mike that this is "Johnny Chang and his brother Ian. You don't want do this." But Mike is all, "Let's race." Just as he's about to race, some guy named Torres calls him and asks if he's made contact with Johnny Chang yet.

Ian's car is a lime-green Lamborghini, and he's not too impressed with Mike's Mustang. "I'm scared," he jokes. "You should be," Mike says. Celine explains the rules of "racing for pinks." There are no rules. They race to the tower and back, and first one back "wins pink." Celine flashes Mike a suggestive smile. Yeah baby! KITT reminds Michael he's the legal property of Knight Industries, and Michael can't actually transfer the title in him to Ian if he loses. Michael tells KITT to win, but make it look like a real race. But then Ian actually starts to win: turns out his lime-green Lamborghini is pimped out with twin turbos and direct injection NOS, which make it faster than KITT. Mike orders KITT to turn on "attack mode." KITT TRANSFORMS, tires widening and stuff. The attack engine HOWLS. KITT passes Ian and Mike gives Ian "the chin." Then Ian crashes his Lamborghini into a pick-up truck, barely getting out before it explodes. Mike's doing his victory dance when he notices KITT's dashboard is burned out and smoke is pouring out of him. Oops!

Later, Sarah is all upset that Mike nearly got himself killed with his bad judgment, but her dad says she needs to trust him because he's the one out there risking his neck. She insists that she and Mike are just friends now, but dad doesn't believe her. And then he gives her some fatherly advice: "When you stop hurting, you stop feeling." Thanks, dad.

At the same time, Johnny and his crew are in trouble: they promised their buyer a Lambo and now it's trashed. Not only that, but it belongs to Mike now. Mike offers them a deal: he needs a sponsor, so he'll race for them instead of taking their Lamborghini. Everybody wins. But they're all like, what are you going to race? Your burned-out Mustang? When KITT shows up, good as new. With Sarah, who's dressed as a hot sexy mechanic. Woo! They go back to the bar, and Sarah and Sean bond. Then Ian tries to slash Mike with a knife, and Mike kicks him in the balls. Yeah! Johnny shows up with two machine pistols, and tells Mike he can race — if he steals Johnny a new Lamborghini first.

It turns out there's a Lamborghini that's a perfect match, but it belongs to a gangster named Dmitri — the "Ukrainian Hugh Hefner." Sarah volunteers to be the one to steal the car, because she's well-trained and looks good in a bikini. Perfect logic! Meanwhile, Celine and Johnny both snoop around Sarah while she's working on KITT.

KITT uses his "3-D object generator" to create a fake key for the Russian gangster's Lamborghini. It's like a 3-D inkjet printer, making the object line by line. Cool! Sarah psychs herself up to steal the gangsters' Lambo by blasting loud rock music so she can get into the Grand Theft Auto frame of mind. Mike is all annoyed, saying "Is this really the time to get your funk on? Those Russian gangsters are real!" She's like, snap.

Then Dimitri catches her checking out his car, and she seduces him. He asks if she's ever had sex in a half-million-dollar car, and she says yes, actually. Then she decks him and steals his car. There's a huge car chase involving Russians with hummers and machine guns. KITT selects a weapon: black ice. He squirts a "super vicious liquid" that makes the Russians skid out of control. But later, they think they have the drop on KITT. They decide to ram him off a cliff, but it turns out to be a HOLOGRAPHIC PROJECTION and they drive right through it, going off the cliff. KITT turns off his holographic projector.

Then Sarah randomly decides to make out with Mike on KITT's hood while blasting some loud rock music, because that was on her list of things to do before she died. (Not with Mike, specifically. Just in general.) And then she gives Johnny the keys to his new Lambo. Rawk.

Mike is finally going to have his big chance to race, but something goes wrong. Ian tries to capture Sarah, out at the garage, but she elbows him and gets away. She hides by hanging from a light fixture, hoping her Jimmy Choos don't fall and give her away. Meanwhile, Mike goes to rescue her and gets bushwacked with a wrench. He wakes up buried up to his neck in the sand. Johnny and his boys are driving toward him brandishing baseball bats and preparing to play "homicidal polo." He has a look of "wide-eyed terror." Eep!

Luckily, KITT helps Sarah and Sean track Mike down. KITT transforms into a 4x4 Ford pickup to go out into the desert. Really. Ian wants to be the one to kill Mike, but Celine the Ice Queen protests. So Ian says she can watch him die up close and tosses him out of the car. She tries to dig him out, but no use. KITT flies out and slams into Ian's car. Ian shoots and hits Celine, who's injured. KITT sprays stuff on Celine to stop her bleeding, and then rushes her to hospital, where she's totally fine.

But then — shock horror! — Mike's old army buddy Sean turns out to be a traitor. He puts a shotgun to Mike's head. Mike ends up handcuffed to a railing. But he manages to swing around and scissor kick Ian, catching Ian's head in a leglock that won't let go. Johnny tries to shoot Mike and ends up shooting his brother Ian instead. Johnny says "Nooooooooooooo!" (It's in the script.) Then he starts shooting wildly and Mike goes for cover.

Meanwhile, the bad guys have KITT Inside a truck and are trying to steal him. Something is draining off KITT's power. When all seems lost, KITT does a "Terminator-esque" thing and reroutes power thorugh his back-up systems. The "POWER LEVELS" readout goes from 2 % to 100 % and the Cylon light throbs to life. (It says "cylon" again.) KITT's Cylon light becomes a super-laser, shooting through the truck. YEAH!!!

Johnny's about to put a bullet in Mike's brain, when KITT flies out of the truck, soaring across the desert and smashing into the container where Mike and Johnny are. There is a MASSIVE FIRE BALL. And then Homeland Security shows up and carts off Johnny. "You really stepped up, Mike. Great job." Says Torres, the random Homeland Security guy. But there are still lingering mysteries, to do with some tattoo or something.

There's the cool monolith, there's the scary reboot of HAL, and there's tension between the Russian and U.S. crews as the two countries inch towards war in Honduras. But then, just as war is declared, a whole bunch of monoliths start making Jupiter collapse (ooohhh, special effects budget in full effect!). So the two crews run away from the esploding Jupiter as fast as they can and . . . well, this happens. Check out the clip. I have literally never seen a more asstacular ending in my life. Are those words literally floating in the sky? Ohh, and the cheesy voiceover. So wonderfully awful! Plus the last line — "I think we will be friends." Really? Not if the aliens watch this movie, we won't. [2010 via IMDB]

Killers From Space is pretty much the zaniest classic scifi movie not to be subject to MST3K treatment. Directed by W. Lee Wilder, brother of Billy Wilder, it features aliens who kidnap a U.S. scientist and brainwash him into helping with their invasion plans. But then he regains control over his faculties after this whole truth serum incident, and manages to destroy the aliens by disrupting their power supply. You can watch the whole thing online for free at the Prelinger Archive. [Archive.org]

NBC aired three TV movies from 1987 to 1994: Return Of The Six Million Dollar Man And The Bionic Woman, Bionic Showdown and Bionic Ever After?. Showdown suffers from the leaden pacing of a TV episode padded out to two hours, but it also lets the characters move forward in a way they never could on a weekly show. In particular, Steve keeps trying to ask Jamie to marry him, but some emergency always interrupts just as the question is being popped. He finally succeeds at the end of the show, and she says yes.

In the third TV movie, as they prepare to get married, Jamie's bionics show signs of breaking down: she has trouble walking, and she can't tune out conversations happening hundreds of yards away. She thinks she's doomed to the scrap heap, but it turns out to be just a computer virus.

Because Clyde downloads the Sadistic Intelligent and Dangerous (SID 6.7) module into a nano-tech android, SID is free to go around slaughtering people, and only Denzel Washington's incarcerated cop can stop him. (The SID module is programmed with the minds of 137 serial killers or something, and he's supposed to be used for police training in VR, but he goes berzerk, to almost nobody's surprise.) Crowe and Washington fight and fight and fight and fight and fight, and then finally Denzel tricks Russell back into virtual reality... where Russell makes Denzel fall through evil cityscapes and tons of bad 90s CGI, until finally Denzel falls headlong into Russell Crowe's cyber-mouth.

I mentioned the other day that Doomsday wasn't screened for critics, and it's easy to see why. I had to go see the first showing at our local theater, which was at noon — exactly 12 hours too early for this sort of movie. If you don't care about logic, or story, or characters, or pretty much anything except for seeing a hot woman dismember people in a tanktop — punctuated by some really, really over the top musical segments — then you'll love this film. It's not Shakespeare. It's not even Shakespeare In Love. But it's better than Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, the last film on this level that I saw.

Here's the plot in a nutshell: in April 2008, a deadly virus (The Reaper) breaks out in Glasgow and spreads like wildfire. The authorities decide, in a very 28 Weeks Later sequence, to quarantine the country and shoot down anybody who tries to get out. But then, 30 years later, a deeply dystopian and slummy London sparks a new outbreak of the virus (which feeds off poverty and overcrowding). The government sends a team up to Scotland to find out why some people survived the virus up there, led by Rhona Mitra's super-commando. Unfortunately, the last survivors of Scotland have fallen into total barbarism.

Doomsday won me over the moment I saw Rhona Mitra's removable eye. Rhona plays Eden Sinclair, who loses an eye as a small girl during the final evacuation of Scotland. When we see her as an adult, she has a prosthetic eye, with a tiny camera inside. The camera goes to a video screen (and digital recorder) in her wristwatch. So she can take her eye out and use it to look around corners, or make secret recordings of whatever she sees. It's really the only scifi-ish thing in the movie, but the first time we see it in action is (sorry) literally eye-popping.

And I'm happy to report that despite all director Neil Marshall (The Descent)'s talk about Mitra's character "keeping her femininity," she's a total hard-ass who doesn't give a shit about anything. We see plenty of scenes of her being a crazy bad-ass and not giving a shit, but just in case we miss it, Marshall has several characters look at her and say things like, "You don't give a shit, do you?" Right at the start of the movie, there's a great scene where her boss, played by Bob Hoskins, smokes with her and tells her that if she keeps going like this, she'll wind up one seriously fucked-up individual. Good to know, Bob. (The great joy of Hoskins these days is watching him slowly morph into Ed Asner.) She does cry once, right at the end, but it's brief and actually appropriate under the circumstances.

The movie is massively over the top from the first few minutes, with a blood spattering massacre at the new Great Wall of Scotland, and then a sequence where Mitra's character takes a bunch of random bad guys. (There's a naked woman in the bathtub, so of course she has a shotgun with her. Who wouldn't?) And it just gets crazier and crazier.

Inside Scotland, there are two groups of survivors. The first, in Glasgow, have turned to cannibalism and really excessive gothpunk fashion. If you don't take joy in watching the blond-mohawked leader of a cannibal tribe dance around to the Fine Young Cannibals, with two pole dancers in fishnets flanking him, then there's just no joy in you. I'm serious. The cannibal leader does a dance routine to Fine Young Cannibals. And then they roast a member of Mitra's team alive and eat him with their bare hands.

The other group of survivors, up north, is led by Malcolm McDowell. And here's where the movie just slides right off the rails. McDowell plays a scientist who was in Glasgow working on a cure for the plague when the country was closed off. And now somehow he's turned into the king of a castle, full of people in fake medieval garb. It's an entire Society for Creative Anachronism culture. And McDowell's scientist character recreates the Spanish inquisition and accuses Mitra of "sin" by having brought the outside world to his castle. (McDowell tries to trick his followers into thinking the rest of the world is dead — but doesn't seem that worried about showing off Mitra and her gang to his followers, even though they're evidence the rest of the world is fine.)

The final reel, when Mitra finds a mint-condition Bentley car in a fallout shelter, and manages to fill the tank with gas, is just bizarre. There's literally a moment where everybody involved seems to decide that if you've watched this far, you're in for the whole ride, and there's no point in trying to make sense any more. I don't know if I should spoil the end of the movie totally, but it succumbs to total dementia. I'm not an epidemiologist, but I'm a tad confused as to how Mitra's "cure" for the disease will work, and why she didn't just avail herself of it two hours earlier. And then Bob Hoskins develops the power of teleportation and becomes mildly psychic. And then Mitra makes some decisions that I can't fathom at all.

Oh, and did I mention that the leader of the cannibals is Malcolm McDowell's son? And that in the final showdown between Mitra's Bentley and the cannibals' ragtag collection of crappy cars and motorcycles, we hear a version of "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood? And the cannibal leader has a biohazard symbol tattooed on his back, and a leashed slave in full rubber bondage gear? And McDowell's medieval freaks have biohazard insignias — and biohazard stained glass?

Bottom line: Doomsday is a worthy addition to the Resident Evil canon of "butt-kicking babe in a ruined world" movies. Just don't ask any hard questions, like where the cannibals get all their pink hair dye and pristine latex bodysuits, and you'll enjoy the dancing, crashing, exploding, splattering, multiple decapitating goodness.

There have been so many Pinnochio-bots in science fiction: Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man, Haley Joel Osment in A.I., Chip in Not Quite Human, Annalee in Alien: Resurrection, NDR-113 from The Positronic Man by Asimov and Silverberg, and Roy Batty (sort of) Blade Runner.But most people would automatically say Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is the purest expression of the Pinnochio-bot mystique. After all, he spent seven TV seasons and four movies exploring humanity over and over again. And his quest took him through comedy lessons with Joe Piscobo (the zen master of comedy), painting, Shakespeare plays and Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas. He probably tried to be a male stripper in between episodes.

But really Data is just a knock-off of the original wannabe human, Questor from The Questor Tapes, Gene Rodenberry's 1974 TV movie. Yet another one of Gene Rodenberry's failed TV series ideas after Star Trek, Questor is about an android who's built by a group of scientists using parts and plans from a mysterious genius Dr. Emil Vaslovik, who's gone missing. The android is a roaring (well, intoning) success, with one problem — his programming is incomplete and he doesn't develop emotions. So Questor goes in search of Vaslovik.

Various people are searching for Questor, and B.J. Honeycutt gets accused of having stolen the android. At one point, B.J. tries to stop Questor, who almost kills him to make his escape. But then Questor realizes that killing is wrong. Yay!

Questor's creator, Vaslovik, who turns out to be a super-advanced android himself, the penultimate model in a long line sent before the dawn of humanity to guide us in the proper course of development, blah blah blah. Vaslovik dies, but not before entrusting Questor to B.J. Honeycutt from M.A.S.H., who promises to teach Questor human feelings: Can you just imagine the weekly episodes, where B.J. teaches Questor another important lesson every week? Actually, you can, because it would have looked a lot like the Data-centric episodes of ST:TNG.

Actually, I guess it's not a perfect Dead Alive homage, because Rhys is using a chainsaw (hence the Evil Dead mention) instead of a lawn mower. But still. Here's an alien shapeshifter, who's taken the form of Rhys' mom and then turned all monstrous, and she's been making Rhys' wedding day hell. So there's something awesome about watching Rhys get ready to tear her to pieces. And possibly slightly Freudian as well.

Gosh: Torchwood, Freudian? Who ever would have guessed?

Speaking of which, our shapeshifter also gave us our first bit of alien sex in god knows how long. She disguised herself as a hawt babe and seduced some groomsman at the wedding, before disemboweling him during sex. It was a fairly low-key scene by Torchwood season one standards, but racy compared to the rest of season two.

There were also a couple of moments between our bride and groom, Gwen and Rhys, when I actually believed they cared about each other, mostly thanks to some decent acting from Kai Owen. And a few of the bits where Gwen insisted on getting married, even if everyone she knows dies as a result, were sort of touching as long as you didn't think things through.

Okay. Now i've run out of nice things to say about the episode. The other 95 percent of it was pretty rough going. You knew it was going to be bad when Gwen had the world's tackiest bachelorette party, featuring three women we've never seen before and will never see again. And then she's mysteriously pregnant the next day, and immediately we go straight to the jokes about raging hormones and eating pickles out of the jar.

And then sadly we're back to the Torchwood-is-incompetent schtick. They let Gwen go ahead with her wedding, despite the fact that she's "pregnant" with some kind of horrendous alien parasite and there may be other monsters looking for her. (Speaking of which, why does the alien's egg wind up in Gwen's stomach? Why not her chest? Or her arm, where she was actually bitten?) They let the second shapeshifter get away about 500 times, and keep getting themselves into situations where they don't know who's the shapeshifter and who's the real person. You'd think after the fifth or sixth time they get confused, they would round up all the bystanders. And then there's the fact that Owen's best plan is to use his explodey device, which only works when it absolutely has to. (And he forgets that he can't operate it due to his stupid hand-smashing ways.)

But mostly, this was Exhibit A for why Torchwood season two has too much crying, and not enough shagging. (I mean, it would be nice if the show had more than those two things to offer, as it did in "Meat" and "Reset." But sex and whining seem to be the two choices most of the time.)

Eve Myles' eyes have never been bigger than they got several times in this episode. It's her mutant power, making her eyes grow to the size of eggplants, while pouting.

Things about Torchwood that my suspension of disbelief can't encompass: I don't believe Jack and Gwen love each other, or even care for each other that much. I don't really believe Tosh is that into Owen. I no longer believe there's anything going on between Jack and Ianto, and it seems increasingly likely that Jack is actually straight and Ianto is a sort of reverse-beard for him. Most of all, I don't believe that anybody would trust any of these people to contain themselves, much less an alien threat.

But I do believe that Rhys and Gwen care about each other, so in some sense this episode should be counted as a success. Sort of.

Akir is a peaceful world. They have no weapons! They don't even have proper houses, just weird mud huts that look like bad Star Trek cast-offs. What's funny about Battle Beyond is that the space battle scenes look pretty great, using the same style of effects as Star Wars. Except that the "Samurai" whom the young Shad recruits to save his "town" include a woman with a huge boob window, who blows up spaceships with her giant space-gun while pushing out her chest as far as she can.

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Right before this clip, the town has managed to fight off a wave of bikers with crazy hair and makeup. But they rejoice too soon — the bikers call in their corporate security guard brothers, who shred the town's defenses so the bikers can build a giant ramp and jump in.

I really can't possibly do 2020 Texas Gladiators as much justice as the master, Joe-Bob Briggs, in his write-up. (In a nutshell, it starts with zombies attacking nuns in a Texas monastery, only to be rescued by rednecks, then it leads to bikers attacking the plucky little town, with the help of the guys in jumpsuits. Fight fight fight fight fight. The end.) But here are a couple of observations:

• The brief scene, between the zombie-monastery attack and the biker/riot cop attack, where the bearded guy keeps the town's refinery from blowing up and then gives a little speech, totally reminded me of Jericho. For about 30 seconds, you think this might actually turn into a post-apocalyptic survival movie, instead of just a big spaghetti Mad Max kung-fu battle in Texas.
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• How awesome is it that the riot shields are basically just a flimsy frame with a giant hole in them? And then there's a "force field" effect added in post. The movie ends with the bald guy walking down the street, alone, with one of those riot shields. Everybody's shooting at him, to no effect. And then one guy tosses a hatchet from a rooftop. And somehow, that gets through. Why? We'll never know.

Yes, the reward for saving the universe from five women who convert into a super-giant woman is to have your girlfriend's breasts gigantify. Jennifer Garner's career had noplace to go but up.

Sexina aims to be a campy comedy about a world-famous singer who puts on a leather catsuit and kickboxes ninjas in her spare time. It's a cute concept, and there are lots of sweet moments in the movie. But Sexina never really kicks ass in the movie. I literally sat there waiting for her to do some martial arts or beat up a bad guy, and it never happens. She does hit a guy with a bottle at one point, and there's a sort of free-for-all at the end. But Sexina isn't nearly as tough as Davy Jones (yes, from the Monkees) informs us in the James Bond-esque theme tune. She mostly relies on other people to get her out of trouble.

Most of the movie consists of jokes that fall flat the first time, and then are repeated endlessly. (Like for example, a supporting character is a high school quarterback with a sensitive side, and at one point, his coach grabs his ass. Then his coach grabs his ass again. And again. And again. And again.) The movie is aiming for a sort of John Waters-lite campiness, but doesn't have the nerve to go all the way over the top. The result is a movie which isn't cartoony enough to get away with its nonsensical premise and one-note characters. The funniest part is a guy in a completely silly fake bear costume who mauls a random thug, and apparently that's because the filmmakers got the wrong bear costume by mistake.

West, as the main villain, goes all-the-way gay, which apparently emerged in rehearsals. The movie's baddie, who letches all his robotic boy-bands, wasn't supposed to be quite so gay. But West just got gayer and gayer with every run-through and take.

There was a brief Q&A with the movie's cast and crew after the screening. They mentioned they'd thought Sexina would have a lot of commercial value, but distributors haven't agreed because it doesn't fall into a neat genre and nobody knows how to market it. So now writer/director Eric Sharkey is hoping it'll become a cult movie. Another problem with the film: it aims lots of barbs at 'N Sync and the Backstreet Boys, which were very timely when Sharkey started working on it ten years ago.

I hate to be so mean about a plucky indy movie, but I feel like you should be warned. You may come across Sexina (probably on DVD) and think it'll be a cheesy, so-bad-it's-good late night movie. But it just doesn't commit enough to its premise to reach that territory, and the oceans of rum-and-cokes it would take to make the gay Adam West and his singing robots funny would probably make you pass out.

Quark is mostly a Star Trek spoof, even down to the original series' sound effects, and the Vulcan-esque first officer, a plant who debates logic vs. emotion endlessly with Captain Quark. Somehow, even though Quark is the galaxy's greatest hero, he ends up commanding a garbage ship and getting into hilarious mishaps in each of the eight episodes. His crew also includes a cowardly android, an androgyne who alternates between extreme manliness and extreme girliness, and two incredibly hot blonde female clones in hotpants. There are still no DVDs, but you can watch the whole thing online here.

There's an ancient prophecy about the Urn of Apollonia, which must be taken to the Temple of Vanity by Sheila E... or we're all doomed.
Score: Minus 10 points
Drinking game: Take at least three swigs of vodka, gin or Southern Comfort, and then attempt to give yourself a swirlie in the kitchen sink.

The hero is the chosen one, who's more special than anybody else ever.
Score: Minus 100 points.
Drinking game: Attempt to drink your own urine.

Characters share useful information with each other, instead of having wacky misunderstandings designed to move the plot forward. Bonus points if they ask each other smart questions.
Score: Plus 70 points.
Drinking game: Have a beer with a sake chaser.

The hero has a miraculous gadget (which may rhyme with ironic brew diver) allowing him to get out of literally any difficult situation with no hassle.
Score: Minus 10 points.
Drinking game: Make yourself a sonic screwdriver out of orange juice, vodka and ultrasonic vibrations. Drink the whole thing in one go.

The main characters are real people, with believable flaws and non over-the-top personal issues. Which they don't resolve in the course of an hour.
Score: Plus 20 points.
Drinking game: Have a shot of the good whiskey. You know, the 20-year-old single malt stuff.

Someone has a superpower that totally defies the laws of physics. Like shapeshifting, which allows him/her to go from being a tiny human to a buick-sized monster by pulling extra mass out of somewhere.
Score: Minus 5 points.
Drinking game: Pour a shot of tequila into your eyes and pretend you're melting into a shape-shifting puddle of goo, which can change its size and mass.

Aliens are genuinely alien, and don't resemble a race or nationality from Earth.
Score: Plus 20 points.
Drinking game: Mix every alcoholic beverage you've got into a bowl, and stick your head into it.

There's a space god, who wears a tunic or toga and talks all mythic, while warping reality.
Score: Minus 1,000 points.
Drinking game: Make a ceremonial libation to the space god, with some sangria, preferably an entire pitcher's worth. Drink the whole thing, while chanting, "What does God need with a starship?"

Events have real consequences, that aren't undone via "reset button" or silly trickery. Bonus points if characters get mortally injured and don't run around for 20 minutes afterwards.
Score: Plus 10 points.
Drinking game: Pour everclear on your hands and light them on fire.

Techno-babble and crazy jargon that makes no sense. Or, if you're reading a book, a description of how a spaceship works that goes on for more than two printed pages.
Score: Minus 5 points.
Drinking game: Hook your blender up to your microwave, using a multiphasic ion-shielding photon decoder. Make a daiquiri, and nuke it in the microwave. If there's anything left, drink it.

Can you suggest any more entries to make this the perfect get-drunk system, erm we mean evaluation tool?

I'll stick to the Torchwood recap checklist I've been using, even though the show continues to be way less sexy and gay than it used to be. All of that space has been filled with idiotic drama, so I guess it's a fair trade-off.

Was there a plot? Yes, and it was awesome. Basically, these evil dudes have gotten hold of an alien space whale and they're cutting chunks of meat off it. The thing grows so quickly, and regenerates itself so fast, they can keep slicing it up forever without killing it. But it's in horrible pain and they have to keep giving it more and more sedatives. The creature looks really impressive, right until the end when it starts rampaging and suddenly looks like a muppet.

The naughtiness: The bit where Captain Jack hits on Rhys' secretary was actually pretty awesome. "Do you need a trucking license? I can go long distances..." Ha ha ha. If only that was all Captain Jack ever did, making sexy innuendo, this would be my favorite show.

How gay was it? If you have to tell us something is homoerotic, it just isn't. That should be rule number one, enforced by a bitchy drag queen with a cat-o-nine-tails. So the whole sequence where Jack and Rhys argue automatically loses what little gayness it might have had. Oh, and there may have been a a few glances between Jack and Ianto.

Who gets laid? Nobody, I think.

The drama: Ugh. The pain. I felt as though I was having psychic chunks carved off me by a man in a yellow helmet, every time Gwen screamed at Rhys or Jack. There was just too much screaming in this episode, and it felt as though everybody was Acting as hard as they could. Oh, and that business where Gwen says there's only one sexy man around, as far as she's concerned? And then she kisses Rhys while staring psycho-killerishly at Jack? Eww. Oh, and let's just pretend all the Toshi-flirts-with-oblivious-Owen stuff just didn't happen. This would have been such a great episode if it hadn't had any of the Torchwood people in it.

Will the kid-friendly edited version make sense to anybody? I can't possibly imagine how. The whole plot is guaranteed to make a kid's hair fall out.

Keaton ends up making two copies of himself: a hard-assed construction worker version to handle work, and a prissy neat freak version to handle his domestic chores. The only rule, as he explains here, is that neither version can sleep with his wife. Of course, they both end up doing her. And so does the genetically damaged clone of a clone whom they create later. The only funny sequence in the movie is when the wife, played by Andi MacDowell, pours out her heart to the mentally challenged clone of the clone.

Sadly, Multiplicity isn't even the best comedy about cloning featuring Eugene Levy in a supporting role, which ought to be a fairly easy category to rise to the top of. That honor belongs to Repli-Kate, a far superior movie.

It turns out that the "Rope" the Rollerboy leader keeps referring to is actually a chemical designed to sterilize the non-white people who use the Mist, the drug the gang peddles. It's a eugenics experiment and a profit center. Pretty sweet deal. And the Rollerboys do throw an awesome party, with tons of balloons, a cute mermaid wearing body paint, and some lube-wrestling. Don't you forget about them.

The biggest mistake in this movie? The inclusion of an evil leprechaun named The Jeweler, who somehow becomes crucial to the FF's mythos. It's the Jeweler who steals the crucial crystals that power the Four's spaceship (while dancing a jig across a laser security system). Later, he adopts the Thing into his family of freaks and also kidnaps the Thing's girlfriend. Finally, he has a thrilling stand-off with Doctor Doom. If you've ever wanted to see the evil Latverian genius face off with a comedy leprechaun, this is your chance. Oh, and Doom's "I will destroy New York" speech is campy in a very, very bad way.

How did this disaster happen? A German production company owned the rights to make a Fantastic Four movie, but was unable to raise the $40 million it needed before the rights were due to expire. So the company turned to Roger Corman, who said he could make the movie cheap and quick. (As commenter ManchuCandidate points out, Corman was willing to take chances.) At $1.4 million, this movie had a huge budget compared to a usual Corman spectacle. After the film was completed, Marvel paid a few million to suppress it. The team worked in secret to complete post-production on it, but then Marvel ordered all prints destroyed. So it's a minor miracle that you're able to suffer through this clip.

The actual plot of Moonraker is surprisingly boring. There are some fancy orchids, and this beardy Nazi guy wants to use them to make a toxin that kills humans so he can breed cute blond people in miniskirts, and Zzzzzzz... But the effects work is pretty great, especially this sequence. The dozens of people floating between the space shuttle and the space station look totally boss. It's the only scene that lives up to my childhood memories.

Other great moments in James Bond's science fiction movie career:

You Only Live Twice (1967). A giant spacecraft is gobbling up U.S. and Soviet space capsules from Earth orbit. Bond discovers that Blofeld, operating out of Japan, is capturing spacecraft to try and provoke World War III. Also, this movie features miniature rocket launcher guns.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Blofeld again, this time trying to collect a bunch of diamonds so he can build a giant laser satellite to hold the world to ransom.

The Man With The Golden Gun (1974). Count Dooku has three nipples and he wants to steal a new solar power gadget that could revolutionize energy technology. We're not sure why. We got stuck on "Dooku has three nipples."

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). The villain, Stromberg, has a massive undersea base and he wants to start a new underwater civilization by nuking the Earth's surface.

Goldeneye (1995). Bond's former spy colleague wants to take control over a huge satellite-based weapons system and use it to destroy the Bank of England.

Die Another Day (2002). Another satellite-based weapons system, the Icarus. This time it's trying to detonate a section of the minefield between North and South Korea, allowing the North Koreans to invade.

1. RoboCop: The Series (1994).
Original cast? No.
Out on DVD? In England, but not in the U.S.
How many episodes? 22
What went wrong: In an effort to make a kid-friendly RoboCop show, the producers toned down the violence and had RoboCop explore "non-violent" alternatives to killing criminals. Recurring bad guys included Boppo the Clown, Dr. Cray Z. Mallardo and "Pud Face." No, really. Here's the opening credits.

2. Alien Nation (1989-91).
Original cast? No.
Out on DVD? Yes.
How many episodes? 22, plus a few TV movies
What went wrong: The TV version lost the noir tone of the movie about aliens living among us. In its place came good-natured humor with lots of banter. The cynical human cop teams up with an alien policeman and they tackle social issues. Watch them save an alien hooker from her pimp:

3. Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (1997-2000)
Original cast? No.
How many episodes? 66.
Out on DVD? No.
What went wrong: Every week, another experiment gone bendy. Plus obligatory subplots about the kids having crushes on other kids, and learning lessons, yadda yadda. Every episode title starts with "Honey." Including: "Honey, We've Been Swallowed by Grandpa." "Honey, I'm Streakin'." "Honey, The Garbage Is Taking Us Out." And my favorite: "Honey, I'm Wrestling With A Problem... And The Chief." Huh? Here's the first five minutes of the pilot. Note the goofy dog covering its face when disaster strikes:

4. Beyond Westworld (CBS: 1980)
Original cast? No.
# of episodes? five, but only three aired.
Out on DVD? Nope.
What went wrong: Westworld hit big with a robot theme-park turned homicidal. A sequel, Futureworld, bombed, so writer/director Michael Crichton decided to try again on television. Every week, Simon Quaid tries to take over the world using android nuclear-sub crewmen and android rock stars. The good guy: John Moore, who spends most of his time watching cheerleaders with his binoculars. Just like in this clip, where Quaid sends a robot duplicate of Connie Sellecca to kill Moore:

5. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures (1992)
Original cast? No, and in fact Alex Winter denounced the show on Arsenio Hall.
# of episodes? Eight, including unaired pilot.
Out on DVD? Hell no.
What went wrong: The producers "took liberties" with the movie's time-travel format, having Bill and Ted travel inside cable TV and into alternate dimensions. In one episode, Rufus (the George Carlin character) has a bad dream about Ted being sent to military school, and travels back to prevent it coming true. But instead, he causes that disaster, by engraving "Chicken Kiev" instead of Ted's father's name on an award. (Huh?) This enrages Ted's dad, who hates chicken kiev. Ted, off to military school, blames Bill for the mix-up and they become enemies. In another episode, Bill and Ted's boss becomes King Arthur:

6. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-81)
Original cast: Yes
# of episodes: 31
On DVD: Yes
What went wrong: The movie was a glorified TV pilot, but it did run in theaters. And like other movies-turned-shows, the series lost most of the themes of the pilot, such as the post-apocalyptic devastation outside of the dome of New Chicago. Instead, it was all about Buck strutting around settings like "Vegas in Space," wearing a skin-tight white jumpsuit with a rainbow armband. And then in the second season, with Hawkman and Dr. Goodfellow, it got really campy:

7. Starman (ABC: 1986-87)
Original cast: No.
# of episodes: 22
On DVD: No.
What went wrong: Instead of husband-wife bonding like in the movie, this time our visiting alien (Robert Hays) bonds with the son who never knew him. They travel around together righting wrongs and learning important lessons. It's a Hulk/Fugitive riff except with a kid in tow. Here's the opening credits, plus Hays dealing with some pushy cops:

8. Logan's Run
Original cast: No.
# of episodes: 14
On DVD: No, but you can download episodes on Amazon Unboxed.
What went wrong: Yet another road-trip show. Logan escapes the city where they kill you when you reach 30. And then he travels around the post-apocalyptic world with his friend Jessica and an android named Rem. They encounter various other societies, including some robots and aliens. William Nolan, author of the original Logan's Run novel, actually worked on this show, and so did Star Trek alums Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold and D.C. Fontana. Here are the opening credits. Check out the furry alien costumes:

At the start of his career, Smith sat down and analyzed the most successful movies of all time and tried to copy them, he told Time Magazine:

"I said, 'I want to be the biggest movie star in the world.'" Lassiter, seeing promise that few others in Hollywood would, took his friend seriously and found a list of the 10 top-grossing movies of all time. "We looked at them and said, O.K., what are the patterns?" Smith recalls. "We realized that 10 out of 10 had special effects. Nine out of 10 had special effects with creatures. Eight out of 10 had special effects with creatures and a love story."

Once Smith had the formula for a hit movie, he started applying it with gusto, leading to Independence Day, Men In Black, Wild Wild West and i robot. After few years away, he's hitting the sci-fi cash register again, with I Am Legend, which comes out next week.

He says Legend is a fall movie, not a summer movie — meaning it's not just "things that happen," but "people responding to things that happen." He also stars in next summer's Hancock, about a has-been superhero who has an affair with his publicist's wife.

First the future world leader turns out to be an alien stooge. Who would ever have suspected? It's not like Senator Neima starts doing the evil jazz hands and saying "tell me about how I will become World President" or anything. Also an alien? Hamill's girlfriend, Rae Dawn Chong (from Soul Man and Quest for Fire). Her Spock hair and robo-acting could have been a giveaway. And then just when everything seems like it's reached its low point, Hamill gets a blast of "future vision," and sees his own pregnant mom, who's due to give birth to him today. But not if the bad guys get to her first.

Actually, the way it's staged, it seems as though Hamill's mom-danger-gram is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The bad guys don't think about trying to cap his zygote until they see the image in his time tunnel. (When he has one of his future-visions, everybody else sees it too.) And just in case they didn't get it, he tips them off by shout-whispering, "Mother!". It's like he's aiming to be the world's crappiest time traveler.

A lot of the storylines deal with the soap opera of our heroes having sex in the crawlspaces while hiding from a monster, and then angsting about it. In this clip, an alien spore infects a nice girl, turning her into a slut who screws men and then makes them explode. That's a pretty typical plot from Torchwood, which follows a secret organization (called Torchwood) that uses alien technology to cope with weird creatures that come through a local time rift. The show's first s