Other than those restrictions, the sky's the limit. Well, there is one other thing. According to the rules:

Use of a time machine or other similar instrument to stop the normal passage of time, giving you say 3 weeks to make a film in what seems like just a weekend to the rest of us - well, that is cheating and we won't stand for it - unless of course you use some kind of mind control and erase any knowledge of this rule or your cheating or the fact that the time machine was invented...

Winners get a video camera. What? No Dalek-shaped chocolate cake?

Sci-Fi London [official site]

• The Starship Exeter: This Star Trek fan-made series comes from the heart of Austin, Texas, and looks like it was filmed alongside the original series. From the sets all the way down to the smallest props, its got the looks. The acting can be slightly hammy at times, but whoever said Shatner wasn't pure pork?
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• Time Distortion: If you can manage to build a replica of the TARDIS, then you've done 95% of the work required to make a Doctor Who fanfilm, mostly because the special effects budget for the BBC back in the day was probably about ten bucks. For the whole season. Kevin Hiley and buddy Jonathan Miles made an audio version of this story when they were both 13 years old, and 13 years later, they made a live-action version that captures the cheese, camp, and charm of the original Doctor Who.
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• Troops: 1977's Hardware Wars was the first-ever fan film that poked fun at the Star Wars universe but this one takes the cake as far as making something new out of something old. It's Cops with Stormtroopers, what more do you need to know? Oh, and it's hilarious. It helped spawn other Star Wars-themed comedy fanfilms like Trooper Clerks and Pink Five.
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• Batman: Dead End: While the Star Wars and Star Trek universes normally receive the most attention from aspiring fanfilmers, Batman has had some pretty decent entries as well. The best of the bunch is this 2003 short film that wowed director Kevin Smith and artist Alex Ross. It inspired other Batman fanfilms like Grayson, about an adult Robin trying to find out who killed Batman (excellent) and World's Finest, where Batman teams up with Superman.
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• Indiana Jones: The Adaptation: This is probably one of the most inspiring stories of labor, love, and fandom. Three twelve-year-old buddies saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, and starting making a shot-for-shot remake with a camcorder. It took them seven years to finish it, and it premiered in Texas on the big screen in 2003. Producer Scott Rudin bought the rights to their story, and art house comic book favorite Dan Clowes is writing it.

Even that allegedly friendly year brought only three sci fi-ish films to be screened in competition, including Primer which was critically lauded, but seen by very few viewers. In fact, if you haven't seen it, it's well worth your time.

Sundance has a "Park City at Midnight" category that serves up what the jury thinks of as weird, alternative films, and it tends to serve as a catchall for anything remotely in the scifi vein. Last year Crispin Glover's bizarre It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine screened in this slot, and it's also been host to films like Saw and The Blair Witch Proejct. But why? Science fiction can clearly be as deep (or as shallow) as any other kind of art film.

Marteinn Thorssson, co-director of the 2004 indie sci fi film One Point O put it best:

A science-fiction film doesn't need to be $80 million and use CGI. Science fiction is about human beings interacting with each other and with technology, and technology has become part of who we are today.

Here are the synopses for this year's semi-science fiction films:

• The Broken is a psychological horror project, starring Lena Headey as a woman whose life descends into nightmare after she sees an apparent double of herself driving by in her own car. Granted, it sounds like an episode of The Twilight Zone, and might have little, if any, science fiction in it. At least they're throwing us a bone and it's not just another hack and slash film!
• Timecrimes: A man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the first of a series of disasters of unforeseeable consequences. Again, sounds like a Twilight Zone episode, and based on the thumbnails they both look like they have a high horror potential.

So where are all the indie science fiction films? If you're trying to seek them out at Sundance, you're going to have a hard time of it, but we recommend checking out the Midnight films, and the Animation Program. In fact, one of the coolest retro science fiction steampunk films we've ever seen, The Mysterious Geographic Expeditions of Jasper Morello, screened as part of the Animation Program in 2005 and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2006. Check out part one below.