Sugimoto's "The TV Show" is a feast for the eyes from the get-go, but watch all the way through to see its multiple realities bleed into one another.

An earlier video, "Full Moon Party," replays human history with furrier primates in the starring roles:

[via Metafilter]

Part of what's really cool about looking at concept art from remakes, revamps and rethinks of classic space sagas is seeing how designers reinvent the classic shapes and original images. But another huge part is seeing how designers add new ships and create new concepts to graft onto the existing lore, and try to make it all fit together. So you have Spock's Jellyfish ship and the Narada in Star Trek, and a host of new ship designs in Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek. And sometimes, like in Lost In Space, you just have to start from scratch if you want to create something really cool looking.

Here are the revamped spaceship concept art pics (plus a few other goodies) that prove remakes may be drek on the whole, but they do give us some amazing art to drool over:

Star Trek: Reinventing the Enterprise and creating other new classic ships.

Superman Rebooted: spaceships and a Kryptonian space battlesuit.

Stargate Universe concept art: inside the Destiny

Doctor Who: redesigning the TARDIS interior, circa 2005.

Lost In Space: a weirdly awesome space fighter.

Planet Of The Apes: Awful movie, but amazing spaceship design.

Battlestar Galactica: bringing her back out of mothballs.

Star Wars prequels: the concept art is better than the movies. Really.

Crashed spaceship exterior, designed by Rick Heinrichs. Model image — more at Bruce Gordon

Crashed spaceship exterior, designed by Rick Heinrichs. Model image — more at Bruce Gordon

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.

A classic of 1970s Filmation technology - which, if you're me, reminds you of that old Tarzan cartoon, although they also did the He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe cartoon in the '80s - Return brought Planet Of The Apes to Saturday mornings, complete with the limited animation and low budget that comes with that move. But that doesn't stop it being a particularly fun, guilty, pleasure. Check out the episode above and then head over to Hulu for the rest. You know you want to.

"Utah has become Hollywood's destination spot for depicting exotic intergalactic worlds.," notes the state's Salt Lake Tribune, citing the new Star Trek, the original Planet of the Apes, and now, the adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' pioneering Barsoom saga.. But while Star Trek spent just four days shooting in the Beehive State, the Tribune reports that director Andrew Stanton's (WALL-E) production will spend at least seven months there, including 45 days of filming. The state has other ties to Burroughs; he served as a railroad cop in Salt Lake City in 1904.

Burroughs' John Carter novels, about a Civil War vet who finds himself doing a lot of alien-fighting and princess-rescuing on the planet next door, are the source of what will be the first live-action movie for much of the Pixar team. The script, co-written by Stanton, got a recent polish from Michael Chabon. We've been waiting for a good John Carter movie since, oh, about 1917, so the prospect of Disney's 2012 release fills us with childlike glee. No doubt Utahns feel the same way; the $28 million and 400 jobs the production is expected to bring to the state should more than make up for losing the Footloose remake to Georgia. (With Chace Crawford instead of Zac Efron in the lead? Georgia can have him.)

Bernard Herrmann

Herrmann is one of the most celebrated composers in Hollywood history, having scored classics from Citizen Kane to Psycho to Taxi Driver. He makes our list for his groundbreaking score for 1951's The Day The Earth Stood Still (pictured above), with its prominent use of the theremin. After this movie, use of the eerie, otherworldly, electromagnetic instrument became the signature sound of sci-fi scores.

Louis and Bebe Barron

The Barrons took Herrmann's innovation a quantum leap further with their score for 1956's Forbidden Planet, which featured not a single traditional acoustic instrument. The husband-and-wife team's collection of all-analog burbles and bleeps sounds delightfully retro today, but the movie's all-electronic score was, at the time, controversial. Still, the sounds ideally complemented the tale of an isolated planet beset by an invisible monster.

Jerry Goldsmith

Goldsmith's 1968 score for Planet of the Apes swung the pendulum back toward traditional orchestration for sci-fi movies. Well, sort of; his tense, percussive score (echoing Charlton Heston's attempt to hold onto his sanity) included a Brazilian instrument called a culka that sounds like hooting monkeys. Goldsmith would go on to write many other memorable sci-fi scores, notably, Alien (1979) and the majestic theme for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), which would be reworked for TV as the theme for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

John Williams

With the original Star Wars (1977), John Williams became the gold standard of sci-fi composers. His Wagnerian use of leitmotifs created instantly memorable themes for the major characters, and his grand opening fanfare is so thoroughly evocative of the movie that it instantly transports viewers back to the sense of awe and wonder they felt when they first saw that imperial cruiser fill the screen. Williams has scored just about every film Steven Spielberg has made; his five-note theme for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) became a character in itself.

Vangelis

The Greek new age composer is best remembered for his electronic score for Chariots of Fire, but his work on Blade Runner (1982) was similarly stellar, a mix of electronica, noirish brass, and traditional orchestral sounds that matched the movie's polyglot futurism.

James Horner

Yes, now he's known for syrupy goo like Titanic, but he got his start as a scrappy Roger Corman factory worker (Battle Beyond the Stars, 1980). He soon graduated to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), where he expanded on Jerry Goldsmith's score for the first movie to include nautical themes (fit for all those Moby-Dick references in the script). His elegaic music surrounding Spock's death and funeral was an early sign of Horner's ability to create music tearjerking enough to make a Vulcan cry. (Genre fans will also recall Horner's memorable scores for 1983's Krull and Brainstorm.)

Alan Silvestri

Silvestri, who's scored nearly every Robert Zemeckis film, is a disciple of John Williams who has a knack for creating a grandiose sound that makes his patron's movies seem bigger and zippier than they are. Case in point: his first big job, the Back to the Future trilogy (1985/89/90). Heard now, it instantly evokes Marty McFly zipping along on his skateboard, or Doc Brown firing up the time-traveling DeLorean. Silvestri's other genre works include Predator, The Abyss, and both Lara Croft movies.

Danny Elfman

Elfman, whose work is so closely associated with Tim Burton that he seems to be the musical portion of the director's brain, combines a reverence for traditional movie orchestration with an irreverence toward classical melody, bred perhaps of his days as the frontman for Oingo Boingo. The result is a frenetic, jumpy, off-kilter sound that's nonetheless grand and majestic, a sound that makes Elfman's music instantly recognizable, not to mention well-suited to such Burton genre pastiches as Ed Wood (1994) and Mars Attacks (1996).

Basil Poledouris

Poledouris created stately, mournful scores for movies with rugged, damaged heroes (the Conan the Barbarian films) and lent a gravity to Paul Verhoeven's science fiction films (notably, 1987's RoboCop and 1997's Starship Troopers) that helped ground their deadpan satire in real human emotions.

Bear McCreary

The ubiquitous 30-year-old composer (who'll be performing the score from Battlestar Galactica this Saturday at a free concert at Los Angeles' California Plaza, as well as next month at Comic-Con) is the sci-fi scorer of the moment, thanks to his television work on BSG and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. His tension-filled scores, mixing traditional orchestration with less orthodox instruments (accordion, bagpipe, duduk, erhu), is completely integral to his shows; particularly BSG, where his Middle Eastern/metal rearrangement of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" (familar and strange at once) was key to understanding the plot and characters.

This scene is from early in the 1972 film that traces the revolt of the apes against their human slavemasters. Ricardo is the caretaker of hyper-evolved Caesar, the secret son of Zira and Cornelius - the two apes who traveled back in time from the ape-dominated 40th Century to futuristic 1991. Long kept away from mainstream society, Caesar is shocked to see how cruelly the ape slaves are treated. And he yells one of scifi's classic lines: "Lousy human bastards!" A line which Ricardo happily takes up.

The premise of this film, which is about to be remade as a movie tentatively called Caesar, is that a plague killed all cats and dogs on Earth. So humans started keeping apes as pets, which quickly evolved into keeping them as slaves.

Caesar eventually leads the apes in a violent revolution. The film's original ending found Caesar vowing to destroy human society, but apparently that didn't go over well with test audiences. So it was reshot to include a slightly less incendiary speech from Caesar, followed by his ape girlfriend Lisa speaking for the first time. She cries out "No!" when he advocates too much violence.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes via IMDB

As Apes afficionados know, Caesar is the name of the first super-smart ape to lead the slave apes to revolution in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (followed by my favorite flick in the series, Battle for the Planet of the Apes). In Conquest, however, Caesar is the son of time-traveling apes Cornelius and Zira - he's far more evolved than his enslaved brethren on near-future Earth. So he's able to lead the revolution partly because he's from a far-future version of the intelligent apes.

But in Frank's movie, set in 2009, Caesar will be the result of the first genetic experiments with uplifting ape intelligence. He'll be mute, able to communicate only through sign language. Frank's said he wants to be as true as possible to contemporary science and just tweak it a little bit. So far, so good: We already have apes who can communicate via sign language.

Apparently one of the big concerns Frank has right now, as he goes into a rewrite on the script, is how to represent Caesar. He's totally opposed to ape suits, which were the preferred mode in other movies (including Tim Burton's execrable remake). So he's trying to figure out how to make the ape a photorealistic CGI creation with a face that's expressive enough to make him sympathetic despite the fact that he doesn't talk.

One thing we know for sure: Caesar will be leading a revolution. Or at least that's what Production Weekly said. Here's their synopsis:

The origins of how the Apes took over Earth. A hyper-intelligent chimp raised by humans incites a worldwide ape revolution and causes the downfall of mankind.

Scott Frank Tells CHUD He's Not Remaking Conquest of the Planet of the Apes [via CHUD]

Planet of the Apes Gets a Director [via CinemaBlend]

According to CHUD, this new attempt to reboot Charlton Heston's most valuable legacy - written by The Hand That Rocks The Cradle's Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, and titled Genesis: Apes — centers around Caesar, a genetically-modified ape that gets adopted by the family of the scientist who created him, and raised as a human child... until his adopted mother gets attacked and his resulting rage lands him in Primate Prison, where he's shunned by the regular monkeys and treated like an average ape by the prison guards. And so he decides to become a terrorist and take over America by force.

Yes, that's right - Genesis: Apes doesn't just have an oddly religious title, it's also a movie about the evils of science (Genetically modifying apes leads to the downfall of American society! I knew monkeys weren't like us! I told you that whole Evolution thing was the devil's work!) that will feature ape terrorists attacking our very lifestyle with their banana-lovin' ways.

CHUD, which seems to find this script to be something other than laughable — "it's the perfect way to get the franchise back up and running," they say — isn't too optimistic about it being made into a movie:

Maybe this is why the script has been languishing all this time. You just can't have your hero working to tear down our modern society. It's too radical! Plus, Fox remains notoriously unfriendly to good genre ideas... It's likely that Genesis: Apes will sit on a shelf forever and ever, but here's hoping that somebody at Fox is paying attention and realizes that even Mark Wahlberg can't keep this franchise down forever.

While we're always up for a good Apes movie, this doesn't actually strike us as having the potential to actually be a good Apes movie... so we're kind of hoping that the script stays on that shelf until someone comes up with a better idea... and a title that involves the words "Planet" "Of" and "The".

Is Planet Of The Apes Getting Rebooted Again? [CHUD]

[Chet Zar]

Planet Of The Apes (Tim Burton version): Wait, what now? Abraham Lincoln is an ape? This ending sort of follows the original Pierre Boulle novel, but sadly makes no sense whatsoever because nothing in the preceding film sets it up.

Screamers: So the nice girl turns out to be a killer cyborg as well, but she's a good killer cyborg, sort of. And then there's a killer cyborg teddy bear on board Peter Weller's spaceship. Oh noes! The end.

The Thirteenth Floor. Whoah dude. What is reality? How did that guy who died in the 1990s suddenly turn up in 2024? Is anything really real, or is it all just a simulation within a simulation within a simulation?

Titan AE. The captain of the ship is our friend. No, wait, he's an evil traitor. No wait, he's actually changed sides again and now he's sacrificing his life to save our heroes. Plus, the good guy knows all about dolphins despite having been raised among aliens.

Android. Klaus Kinski is working to create androids on a hidden space station.... but then it turns out he's actually an android himself! Whoah!

Every M. Night Shyamalan movie ever. That guy is dead, hey? And the aliens are allergic to water, so they decided to invade a planet that's mostly water. And the village is now. Whoah!

Battlestar Galactica, "Epiphanies." And then it turns out the half-Cylon hybrid fetus blood is magically the cure for the president's cancer. Wha? Why?

The 27th Day. Aliens show up and give five capsules that will destroy the world to five humans. All the humans have to do is avoid opening the capsules of mass destruction for 27 days and the world is saved. But oh noes! The Soviet Premier gets control over one of the boxes and wants to use it to hold the world to ransom and attack the United States. Good thing it turns out at the very last minute that you can modify the capsules to slay "only the enemies of freedom." All WMDs should be that discriminating.

The Mist. The army shows up... just a moment too late!

I am Legend. The cured plague victim's blood is actually a vaccine! (This makes sense in the Heston version, but isn't really explained or fleshed out in the Smith version.) And Alice Braga and her kid can survive a huge explosion, as long as they're locked in an airtight vault. Plus, the village is now! I mean, the village is real!

Mission To Mars. Not only is there life on Mars, but it's incredibly goofy. And it turns out they seeded Earth with life. And now they want to meet Gary Sinise, so they can tell him how much they loved Forrest Gump.

Vanilla Sky. OMG, what is reality? Tom Cruise's tragic girlfriends keep merging into one woman, and he can't keep them straight, but then it turns out he's in suspended animation having a 100-year-shroom dream. But then he wakes up, and he's still shrooming. Or is he? He jumps off a building, and into a big eye. Whoah. What just happened? The end.

Family Tree by Sheri S. Tepper. It turns out they're all animals!

Dark Star Rising by Frederick Pohl. The alien Erks promise to help restore America's lost superpower status... but it turns out every race they've "helped" before has died off!

Soylent Green. Up with people!

Superman Returns. Superman and Lois have a love child!

The Astronaut's Wife. Johnny Depp's astronaut is really possessed by a goopy alien... but electrocuting him just causes the alien to leap into his wife, Charlize Theron.

Highlander 2. No, wait — the Immortals are actually aliens from the planet Zeist! And Sean Connery and Chrisopher Lambert were friends there. They just... forgot about it when they came to Earth. It all makes total sense.

Andromeda, the final season. But wait, Trance the purple girl is actually a sun. No, really! And she gave birth to some kind of ultimate evil thingy.

New X-Men. Xorn, the wise masked mutant, is acutally Magneto, the misguided (also masked) mutant separatist. Oh noes! Except that he isn't. Never mind.

Iron Man/Avengers. Tony Stark/Iron Man has really been working for the time-traveling maniac Kang all along. Since the beginning! But never mind, here's his teenage self, carreid forward in time to take his place.

Amazing Spider-Man. Spider-man's longtime girlfriend Gwen Stacy had a baby — with the Green Goblin!

Captain America. The Nazi Red Skull transfers his mind into a clone of Captain America, and then becomes the U.S. Secretary of Defence. You go to war with the Red Skull you have, not the Red Skull you wish you had. Or something.

Amazing Spider-Man (again.) Spider-Man was his own clone all along! Oh wait — no, he wasn't.

The Clone Republic by Steven Kent. According to the author himself, there's a "stupid plot twist" involving guns that are way way too easy to sabotage. By pinching them. Which does seem a tad weird.

Quantum Leap, the final season. Suddenly Sam is jumping into famous historical figures. He's Lee Harvey Oswald! He's Elvis! But wait, there's also an evil leaper who's breaking everything Sam's fixed! And maybe Sam's a vampire! But maybe not!

Independence Day. The aliens turn out to be vulnerable to a virus on an Apple Mac. Steve Jobs, alien killer!

JLA. Amazo the killer android has all the powers of the Justice League — so he loses all his powers if the League disbands!

And of course:

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Luke and Leia are really siblings! OMG narrow incest escape!

Thanks to Liz for research help. Also, several plot twists came from here and here.

Tonight, there's a new New Amsterdam on Fox at 9 PM. John investigates the death of a young man who resembles the son he lost in the early 1900s, and he starts questioning his past actions and the consequences they have on the people around him.

Also, FX is showing Terminator 3 at 8 PM, in case you want to compare its timeline with that of The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

It's also worth mentioning that as you read this, the Sci Fi Channel is having a Battlestar Galactica marathon that's going to carry on all week, from 8 AM to 6 PM every day. For some reason, the only episodes Sci Fi isn't showing are the first miniseries and the start of season one. Why, Lords of Kobol, why?

Tuesday, Nova investigates the possibility of life on Saturn's moon Titan, with "Voyage To The Mystery Moon," on PBS at 8 PM. (Check your local listings.) And in the companion website, NASA's Carolyn Porco (an advisor to the new Star Trek movie) discusses the water plume on another moon, Enceladus. And in case you need more Moon action, some PBS stations are also showing a rerun of American Experience: Race To The Moon.

And at 9 PM, the History Channel features a new The Universe, all about "Nebulas," which are the "crown jewels" of the universe, and the places where stars are born and die.

But that's not the end of Tuesday's science fictional documentary action. At 10 PM, ABC News has a special called Live To Be 150... Can You Do It? The bad news: Barbara Walters is going to live to be 150 as well, and she'll keep lisping at you from the nursing home TV set.

During the day, AMC is showing Escape From The Planet of the Apes, followed by Beneath The Planet of the Apes and the Poseidon Adventure. It all starts at 8 AM. And in the evening, FX has Terminator 3 again, followed by The Day After Tomorrow.

I'm not going to make any snarky comments about how Flip That House should be considered science fiction in today's housing market.

Wednesday there's more documentary action with a new UFO Hunters on the History Channel at 10. This time around, it's "Alien Contact." We meet people who claim to have had intimate contact with aliens, and then the experts determine what, if anything, really happened. Somehow it lasts a whole hour.

And at 1 AM Weds. morning, AMC has Species. Although honestly, I'm sort of intrigued by the probably-not-scifi Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?, on Oxygen at the same time. Also, at 8 PM, FX has Terminator 2. And The Day After Tomorrow is on FX once again, at 5:30 PM.

Thursday there are Smallville and Lost reruns. It's your chance to get caught up on Smallville, if you've been skipping it. This is the episode featuring superhero Black Canary as a New Wave, knife-throwing, leaping Ann Coulter clone. That's got to be worth a look, right?

And for those of you who telecommute or have a TV in your office, AMC is at it again, with Enemy Mine followed by The Thing, starting at 8 AM. And then at 5 PM, AMC has Terminator 2 again. Also, FX has Jonathan Demme's Manchurian Candidate twice, at 8 and 11 PM.

At midnight, FX is showing White Chicks, possibly the most disturbing scifi movie of all time.

And then on Friday at 10 PM, you finally remember why you even own a television set. Battlestar Galactica returns to Sci Fi with "He That Believeth In Me." The episode picks up right where season three ended, and it's a pretty intense ride from beginning to end. To recap: Starbuck is back from the dead and claims she's been to Earth. Two beloved characters, and two not-so-beloved ones, have turned out to be Bob Dylan-loving Cylons. And the other Cylons are about to trash the humans once and for all. Here's a promo clip:

Meanwhile, Spike has the basic cable premiere of Star Wars Episode 1 at 8 PM, part of a Star Wars marathon that carries on this weekend and next weekend.

Also, AMC has the original Planet of the Apes at 11 PM and FX is once again showing the retina-scorching White Chicks at 9.

Saturday morning, there's the final ever episode of Legion of Superheroes, "Dark Victory Part 2," at 9:30 on CW, followed by a new Spectacular Spider-Man, featuring the Rhino. And then at 10:30 on Cartoon Network, there's a new Transformers Animated: "Megatron Rising, Part 2." Which sounds like good news for Megatron, and maybe not such great news for Optimus Prime. The Autobots fail to protect Earth from the Decepticons, and have to fight harder than ever to safeguard the Allspark.

And then in the evening, Torchwood bounces back from its circus lowpoint, with a really quite decent episode. Gwen is determined to investigate the disappearance of a teenager, even after Jack tells her to leave it alone. What she discovers makes her see Torchwood in a whole new light. That's on BBC America at 9 PM.

Meanwhile, Spike continues its celebration of having bought the rights to the Star Wars movies, re-running The Phantom Menace at 5 PM and then showing the basic cable premiere of Attack of the Clones at 8 PM.

And on Sunday, Spike finishes its first weekend of Star Wars, showing Clones again at 4:30, followed by the broadcast premiere of Revenge of the Sith at 8 PM. And here's a nifty trailer:

Usually when we throw together a list of "the best this" or "the definitive that," we're willing to concede that we might have missed something. But this time, we're screeching and flinging our own feces with the total confidence that we have covered all of the space monkeys in history. Mostly thanks to the obsessive-compulsive maniacs at Monkey Conspiracy, who compiled an exhaustive list of monkey films. Plus Mr. Monkey's List of Famous Monkeys. Top image from Adrian Platts.

First of all, of course, there are the Planet of the Apes movies, which are almost their own genre. (We won't even get into the thorny question of whether apes are monkeys.) it's the distant future, except in the Burton version where maybe it's an alternate Earth, and apes have taken over, and humans can't talk. It's all part of some bizarro analogy for race relations in America.

Space Chimps, coming this summer, is an animated movie about the grandson of the first chimp in space. Ham III gets blasted into space by an unscrupulous senator. Then, somehow, he gets zapped to a faraway star system, where he has to help overthrow the evil ruler of another inhabited planet. Good thing two other smart, resourceful chimps are on board his spaceship.

Captain Simian & The Space Monkeys. An animated show from the mid-1990s, and yet another story about astronaut monkeys. This time, a monkey-naut in the 1960s gets lost in the outer reaches of space, only to get picked up by a race so advanced, nobody can pronounce their name. The monkey gets an upgrade, including enhanced intelligence and high tech, and recruits a squad of other monkeys to fight a villain who's half-human, half-black hole (and who wants to destroy the universe.)

Lost In Space. The TV show and the movie had many important differences, but one central element remained constant: Penny's space monkey. In the TV show, she befriends a weird alien monkey with long ears named Debbie, or Bloop, after the funny noise she makes. In the movie, the monkey's named Blarp, and instead of being a real chimpanzee with a funny hat, she's CGI mixed with animatronic:

Star Trek: Voyager. In one of the most memorable episodes of Voyager, "Resolutions," Captain Janeway and Chakotay get bitten by an insect, so they can never leave a particular planet. Voyager has to go warping off without them, leaving Janeway and Chakotay to put on funny vests and take up gardening and pandering to J/C shippers. But there's a complication: Janeway meets a cute-ass monkey, who threatens to steal her affections away from Chakotay. Which one will she choose? Luckily, Voyager comes back with a miracle cure before Janeway has to decide. That was close!

2001: A Space Odyssey. There are some apes tossing a bone around on a lazy Sunday, and then a big obelisk/monolith thingy shows up. I don't think the apes ever get into space in this film, but space comes to them. So I'm including it.

Monkeys In Space. A twice-weekly webcomic about a group of monkeys zipping around the galaxy and trying to wipe out the remnants of the human race. And score some bananas:

Moon Pilot. Another movie about chimp astronauts, this 1962 Disney comedy features a space chimp who makes contact with a race of telepathic aliens, who just happen to look like hawt babes. No human astronaut wants to follow in the path of the alien-crazed chimp, until he sticks a fork in a young trainee's ass at a dinner party, prompting the man to volunteer by mistake.

The Right Stuff. NASA wants to send monkeys up into space before it sends up any trained astronauts, prompting the classic line: "The issue here ain't pussy, it's monkey." But why can't it be both?

Robot Monster. An alien invader, looking suspiciously like a man in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet on his head, manages to kill everyone on Earth... except for six people. The film was such a huge disaster, the director reportedly attempted suicide (unsuccessfully.) Here's a clip:

Rocket Man. A spaceship full of humans blasts off into deep space, with the humans in suspended animation. But the ship's resident chimp (you have to have one, it's regulations) accidentally wakes one of the humans up, and he has to spend months entertaining himself while the other humans sleep. Good thing he's got a chimp to keep him company.

Space Ghost. In the original 1967 cartoon, Space Ghost had twin sidekicks, Jan and Jace. (Not unlike the wonder twins in Superfriends.) And Jan and Jace had a pet monkey, Blip. Similarly, the Wonder Twins had their pet blue monkey, Gleek.

The Existential Adventures of ASTRO-CHIMP, First Monkey In Space. An animated program on the Sci Fi Channel, this is yet another astronaut chimp show, which supposedly is incredibly boring and pointless despite its cool name.

The Monkey In The Rocket by Jean Bethell. A children's book about monkeys in the space program. Sample lines: "Sam and Bam are Monkeys. They are very special monkeys that live in a very special place... at the Blue Sky Rocket Base." Sam is the bravest little monkey, who volunteers (sort of) for a one-way trip to the farthest reaches of the universe... and oxygen starvation!

The Scary/Angry Monkey Show. On Invader Zim, Zim's robot servant Gir is obsessed with a TV show that's either called Scary Monkey or Angry Monkey. It seems to consist of a monkey, sometimes wearing a band-aid, looking somewhat pissy or freaky. He's obviously in outer space, or why would he be in such cramped quarters?

Dexter's Laboratory. The monkey Simion gets shot into space and becomes hyper-intelligent (of course) and then becomes a supervillain. His dastardly scheme: Invade Earth to get revenge on all the humans who helped make him the megalomaniac he is.

Monkey Business by J. Otto Sebold and Vivian Walsh. The first monkey in space, conveniently called Space Monkey, comes back to Earth and starts a business to capitalize on his fame: he builds a supercomputer that turns out objects that look like cubist cupcakes. Nobody's sure what they are, but they're tremendously popular. Then it turns out if you point a TV remote control at the objects, they open up into tiny apartments.

• Before Charlton Heston entered into acting, he had to change his name to shed his connection to a science fiction classic. Born John Charles Carter, he shared a name with the hero of Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom series of books, which featured John Carter as an American Civil War veteran fighting mythical creatures on Mars. The first book, A Princess of Mars, was being developed into a film in the early 1950s as Heston began acting, although it later fell through.
• Planet Of The Apes: While first deemed too expensive, 20th Century Fox eventually shot a $50,000 test scene in the 1960s in order to show that the film had potential. This was Heston's first turn as Astronaut George Taylor, and his star power helped convince the executives to go for it. The resulting film was a success, and led to countless repeatings of Heston's line, "Take your stinking paws off me you damned dirty ape!" for years to come.
• Beneath The Planet Of The Apes: Heston agreed to appear as Taylor again in this film, but only in a small supporting role. He also wanted his character to be killed off, and he got his wish in a spectacular way when he was the one who triggered the Doomsday device that destroyed the planet. The series went on to have three prequel films and a television series, but suffered declining ratings. Who knows if Heston would have been able to save the series, but he'd had his fill of monkeyshines.
• The Omega Man: Heston played Robert Neville in this second film adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend novel in 1971. Complete with afro-wearing Rosalind Cash playing it to the nines as a Foxy Brown version of Lisa, Heston sported Ray-Bans and an automatic weapon throughout the film's Los Angeles setting. It's a bit campy, but still considered a classic by fans of science fiction and guns everywhere.
• Soylent Green: Is there anyone left alive in the world who doesn't know what Soylent Green is made out of? Based on the 1966 scifi novel Make Room! Make Room!, the Earth has become incredibly overpopulated and food resources are extremely scarce. The Soylent Corporation aims to tide hunger with their miracle foods, soylent red, soylent yellow, and the ever-popular new flavor, soylent green. Heston plays a detective who unravels the mystery behind the tasty treat, leading to another very popular Heston-quote, "Soylent Green is people!"
• Earthquake: While not exactly science fiction in plot, this Heston disaster flick featured a new process that Universal Studios decided to install in theaters in order to help pump the excitement during the movies earthquake sequences. "Sensurround" involved huge speakers and a 1,500 watt amplifier that could pump out "infra bass" — ass-rattling waves of sound. Supposedly the system caused nosebleeds, cracked ceilings, and destroyed china in nearby shops. The process was also used in the 1979 Battlestar Galactica theatrical film, and later relegated to the trash heap.
• Solar Crisis: Heston's return to science fiction films in 1990 resulted in this god-awful travesty of a movie that features an artificially intelligent bomb named Freddy and TV's Parker Lewis Can't Lose himself, Corin Nemec. The combined might and one-armed pushupability of Jack Palance and Charlton Heston couldn't prevent this $55 million dollar movie about dropping a bomb into the sun to redirect solar flares from flaming out.
• Planet of the Apes (2001): Besides a role on an episode of SeaQuest DSV and narrating Michael Bay's Armageddon, Charlton Heston last science fiction role was an uncredited cameo as a dying ape who hands a pistol to his son in this Tim Burton-directed remake. This film was so bad that I wouldn't have wanted my name in the credits either.

• Planet of the Apes: Probably the most famous image from this film is ol' Chuck Heston riding up the beach and finding the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand, which means New York City is buried under a ton of coastline. "You blew it all up. You really did it. Damn you... goddamn you all to hell!" Sorry, Charlie.
• Escape From New York: While there's still a few people kicking it around New York, Manhattan has been turned into a maximum security prison, and of course they haven't been kind to the Statue of Liberty either. Director John Carpenter shot the film in St. Louis, Missouri and was able to convince city officials to turn off the power to ten city blocks each night to simulate the desolate city.
• Independence Day: New York City is bustling and full of life... until a giant flying saucer comes and zaps the place to hell. As expected, the Statue of Liberty buys it in this one, although it just looks like she might be taking a nap in the Hudson River, but the city didn't look fare quite so well.
• Deep Impact: New York City gets taken out by chunks of a comet that has been split in two in this 1998 movie. Several other U.S. cities supposedly get decimated as well, but it's Manhattan that we see getting blasted. A tidal wave created by the impact also takes out the Statue of Liberty, and pushes her head through the streets like a giant pinball.
• Armageddon: Two months after Deep Impact, Armageddon slammed into theaters, taking a good sized chunk of New York City with it. While the Statue of Liberty's plight isn't shown, we do get to witness the top of the Empire State Building coming off and slamming into the streets and bringing the observation level down to the ground floor. What a view.
• Artificial Intelligence: A.I.: Even the combined might of Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg couldn't manage to put any intelligence into this film about artificial intelligence, nor could they save New York City from being flooded and smashed up like some child's Lego toyset. Although bonus points for having the Statue of Liberty survive, even though she's buried underwater up to her torch.
• Vanilla Sky: Tom Cruise wakes up to a bad day where he's the last person in New York City, resulting in a pretty spectacular shot in a desolate Times Square. The production was given unprecedented access to the location for filming, and the city let them shut everything down and empty it out one early Sunday morning just for this scene.
• The Day After Tomorrow: Director Roland Emmerich wasn't satisfied with blowing New York City to smithereens in Independence Day, so he decided to give the place a good going over in this film. New York gets battered by tidal waves, flooded, and then frozen to absolute zero in order to show you the dangers of global warming. Even the Statue of Liberty gets iced with sideways icicles.
• Cloverfield: All we know about this J.J. Abrams-produced movie is that some sort of giant creature starts tearing the city apart, and the Army tries to fight back. Plus, the thing whacks the heads off of Lady Liberty, and it goes sliding down a city street taking out cabs. For a thing built in 1886, she sure is pretty damned resilient.

Famous Names: Charlton Heston, Roddy MacDowall, Kim Hunter, James Whitmore (Cast)

Crunchy Goodness: 3

Sequels: Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Battle for the Planet of the Apes — plus two TV series, Planet of the Apes and the animated Return to the Planet of the Apes, and Tim Burton's dreadful 2002 re-make.

Bang for Your Buck: The extensive, expensive ape make-up — representing nearly 20% of the film's entire budget.

Deadliest Spoiler: It WAS Earth all along!

An overview of the entire Apes Saga: Those Damn Dirty Apes! by Anthony Leong