Galaxy Quest: Granted, the worst thing that happened at the actual convention celebrating the long-cancelled (and nonexistent) TV show Galaxy Quest was its star getting wasted and telling off a fan. But a long ways away, the Thermians were experiencing the minor crisis of genocidal war. For them, the convention is a bit of a salvation, as it puts them in touch with the actor they mistakenly believe to be the heroic Capitain Peter Taggart.

Futurama "Where No Fan Has Gone Before": Yes, the slaughter of all Star Trek fans (whose conventions had evolved into religious ceremonies) was pretty horrible, but the cast of the original Star Trek series seemed more miffed by the actions of noncorporeal fanboy Melllvar, who stages the most annoying Star Trek convention ever, and forces them to battle the crew of Planet Express.

Family Guy "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven": After watching the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation field a litany of irrelevant fan questions, a frustrated Stewie builds a transporter and kidnaps the actors to stage his own personal Star Trek convention (taking a page, it seems, from Futurama's Melllvar). And, in the spirit of the show, he kills off Denise Crosby early on.

Family Guy's Stewie meets Star Trek The Next Generation from Work Avoidance on Vimeo.

CSI "A Space Oddity" and "Fur and Loathing": Some fans will take drastic measures to keep their favorite shows from getting remade. In "A Space Oddity," a filmmaker looking to remake the cult TV show Astro Quest turns up murdered. As if that weren't a sufficiently obvious reference to Battlestar Galactica, Grace Park, Kate Vernon, Rekha Sharma, and Ron D. Moore all have cameos.

Perhaps more notorious is the episode "Fur and Loathing," where a dead murder victim is found wearing a raccoon fursuit, leading the CSI team to a furry convention. But it's portrayed as less a fan convention than an opportunity for costumed attendees to "yiff" one another.

Mr. Monk in Outer Space by Lee Goldberg: How do you get away with murdering a science fiction creator? Dress as one of the show's most popular characters and escape into the convention. That's the set-up for the fifth Monk novel, where Monk must investigate the creator of the fictional scifi drama Beyond Earth, and rely on his agoraphobic fanboy brother to help identify the killer.

Bones "The Princess and the Pear": When a booth babe from a science fiction and fantasy convention is found decomposing in a nearby sewer pipe, her fellow convention-goers seem less concerned for her well-being than for the fate of a sword she owned, a prop from an early fantasy film. The otherwise geeky team is out of their element here, relying on gloomy intern Colin Fisher and wunderkind psychologist Lance Sweets (who, amusingly enough, dons a redshirt Star Trek uniform) to infiltrate the con.

Numb3rs "Graphic": Admittedly, this episode of Numb3rs has occupies a soft spot in my heart, and not for the theft-of-priceless-comic-book-ends-in-murder primary plotline. It's because in addition to Numb3rs star David "Mr. Universe" Krumholt, it features Wil Wheaton as a douchebag collector.

Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb: Sharyn McCrumb's novel is an object lesson for all crotchety creators. Appin Dungannon is a fantasy author whose temper is so legendary that his fans attend conventions just to watch him throw furniture. When the small-statured author winds up dead, a hard science fiction author (implausibly named James O. Mega) has to figure out if one of Dungannon's fans took his insults to heart.

Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones: Jones' novel brings the entire multiverse down on an unsuspecting scifi and fantasy convention. Rupert is a Magid, a sort of magical lobbyist aiming to make Earth more magic-friendly. When his mentor dies, Rupert must take on an apprentice, and he gathers all the likely candidates at science fiction convention. Naturally, when things go awry, all multiverse breaks loose, leaving the convention vulnerable to rampant centaurs and assassins.

Atomic Betty "Cosmic Comicon": Conventions just wouldn't be the same without the occasional supervillain attack. When Atomic Betty's pal Noah publishes Atomic Chick a comic book based on her adventures, Dr. Cerebral becomes confused by a fan cosplaying "Dr. Brainy," and launches an attack on the convention. But, fortunately, a group of cosplayers portraying Atomic Chick make short work of him.

Link:

Sandman "The Doll's House": The "cereal convention" described in the second arc of Neil Gaiman's epic comic series isn't precisely a fan convention, but it's too weird and disturbing to ignore. Like any other group of professionals, serial killers apparently need to meet, hold panels, and swap trade secrets. But woe unto any tourist who inadvertently wanders into panels titled, "Women in Serial Killing" or "There is No Sanity Clause."

Power Rangers: Dino Thunder "Drawn into Danger": Who knew that Artists' Alley could be weaponized? The Power Rangers run into typical trouble at a comic convention, where their nemesis/high school principal hands a famous comic book artist a magical pen that traps the Rangers in a superpowered battle with the latest monster of the week, Fridgia.

Roswell "The Convention": It's no surprise that the city of Roswell, New Mexico, would attract the occasional alien enthusiast convention. And, given that Jonathan Frakes numbers among Roswell's executive producers, it's hardly shocking that Commander Riker would make a guest appearance. What couldn't be anticipated is the bloodshed that ensues when a conspiracy theorist meets up with an actual alien.

The Simpsons "Mayored to the Mob": Generally, the worst thing to hit Springfield fan conventions is the Comic Book Guy and his perpetually superior attitude. But during one ""Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con," a riot sparks, threatening to kill Star Wars actor Mark Hamill. And in, a first for celebrity guest stars on The Simpsons, Hamill finds Homer Jay Simpson is his only hope.

The brothers Steve and Mike Wang were approached to create an American version of Kamen Rider Ryuki by Toei Studios a few years ago. They did a sort of "test pilot" for the American version, and the studio loved it.

In the U.S. version, called Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, a young guy named Kit Taylor is constantly getting into trouble and being wrongly accused of being a juvenile delinquent, while he broods about his missing father. And it turns out his dad was actually kidnapped to another dimension by the evil General Xaviax, who is imprisoning and enslaving humans. Then Kit gets hold of an Advent Deck that lets him create weapons and armor, and he gets recruited by a Dragon Knight named Len, who teaches him to be a Dragon Knight too. It's a fun kids' show, and the stunts, from the original Japanese version, are pretty awesome.

The Wang brothers explained that they use a lot of the Japanese action and special-effects footage for budgetary reasons. But their version doesn't follow the original Japanese storyline at all. They used some of the concepts and a few of the characters, but for the most part it's all an original story.

"The original Japanese story is really different. It's way darker than we'd be allowed to do in America," explains Mike Wang. "It's very bloody. People get kidnapped. [And] it's way complicated. When i was watching the subtitled version, I didn't understand what was happening sometimes." Also, the Japanese version doesn't have one main villain, like General Xaviax. Instead it's more like Highlander, with people dueling and battling, and whoever wins gets a wish granted. Also, the Japanese version has a new Kamen Rider ever year, and the Wang brothers aren't sure if they'll follow that model in a second season.

The American version is more of a coming-of-age tale, with a strong focus on good versus evil and saving the world. Kit faces a lot of situations that aren't easy to face, and has to make a lot of tough decisions. So far, the response from fans of the Japanese show has been pretty positive, except for a few die-hards.

"For us, it was a big honor to do this show," says Steve Wang. "We're treating it with a lot of respect." So it's great that some fans like their version better than the original.

Another change from the Japanese version: The Wang brothers expanded the roles of a few of the main riders. One of them is a female Kamen Rider, the first in the history of the franchise. "It's important to us to expand her role," says Steve Wang. She shows up in episode 21 (out of 40) and plays a really important role in the story.

Kamen Rider is more mature and sophisticated than Power Rangers, the Wang brothers insist. There's more of a serialized story, and less monster-of-the-week stuff. Doing a more episodic format was not even an option for Kamen Rider becuase of the nature of the Japanese footage. They want it to be along the lines of other addictive serialized shows, like Macross/Robotech.

Kamen Rider Dragon Knight appears Saturdays at 11:30 on the CW.

The survey of 3000 UK parents, carried out by website TheBabyWebsite.com, happily blamed television for children's bad dreams:

All children suffer from nightmares at some point during childhood. But there is no doubt that viewing unnecessary violence and hostility on television contributes to this.

Who wasn't the only show named and shamed; Primeval, Ben 10 and even Power Rangers had fingers pointed at them as bad influences, with two thirds of those polled admitting that they had trouble choosing what was and wasn't suitable for their children. Doctor Who, in particular, was singled out for being "too dark and sinister for under seven-year-olds," with the majority of those polled wanting it to be pushed to a later, less kid-friendly timeslot.

Speaking as someone who went through enough "watching television from behind my hands" moments as a nipper, I now want someone to poll 3000 British kids about how destructive to fertile imaginations over-protective parenting can be in the long-term. As well as the next season of Doctor Who to contain at least one terrifying moment per episode, just because.

TV shows including Doctor Who 'giving children nightmares' [Telegraph.co.uk]

Transformers: "Don't Run Away From Home"
Transformers tell you how selfish you really are.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: "Don't Smoke Weed: Get A Teacher"
Classic turtle lingo, but seriously, getting a pizza isn't that bad of a suggestion.

Thundercats: "Don't Do Anything"
A hosts of cat characters give you the run down.

Star Wars: "Don't Drive Drunk"
Friends don't let friends drink and do Kessel runs.

He-Man and She-Ra: "Don't Get Sexually Assaulted"
Love the shout out to a minister or a rabbi.

Power Rangers: "Don't Be A Jerk"
Good thing Billy had the temporal displacement unit handy.

For all the potential that the crossover presented - I mean, come on, who wouldn't want to see the Pink Ranger share pizza with Michaelangelo? - the show itself relied on dubious star power instead of anything like, say, good writing, to make its case. Yes, there's some weird pop-cultural win in seeing grown men in rubber turtle suits wrestle grown men and women dressed as Power Rangers, but the plot pretty much follows the standard superhero team-up formula - One side (In this case, the Turtles) get mind-controlled and fight the other, before teaming up and defeating the bad guy - and the dialogue isn't any more impressive. I'd complain about the writers not taking pride in their work, but then I remember that their job was to write Power Rangers In Space, and that it probably took all of their willpower to not shoot themselves in the head when they woke up each morning.

That's not to say that the show didn't offer some cheap thrills - Space-surfing Turtles don't come along every day, sadly - but don't take our word for it. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can see for yourself what happened when titans clashed:

The Power Rangers Meet The Ninja Turtles!!! [Scary-Crayon]

Storm Blaster and Lightning Cruiser from Power Rangers In Space. These are the two smartest and fastest cars in the universe. Storm Blaster is the Jeep, Lightning Cruiser is the sports car. They were lost inside an asteroid for thousands of years, but then the villain Divatox (best name ever!) found them and tried to control them. Instead, they decided to team up with the Power Rangers. In the clip above, Divatox's minions have the two cars chained up and are whipping them. (No, really.) But the cars bust loose, and Storm Blaster flies off into space. Wheee!

Ultra Car is the super smart (and arrogant) SUV which the alien-fighting organization SEMY created to battle the Martian invaders in It's Walky, the webcomic by David Willis. Walky has the ability to fly into space, and because he's made without using any Martian parts, the Martians can't detect him. But he has a bit of a chip on his chassis about being people's "property" when he's so much smarter than they are. Here he is motoring into space:

Speed Buggy was Hanna-Barbera's attempt at revamping Scooby Doo, except instead of a talking dog, it was a talking car. Every episode, Speed Buggy and his gang of meddling kids would get involved in another mystery. They also battled spaceships, giant robots, giant monsters and super-tanks with freeze rays. Unfortunately, Speed Buggy sounds sort of like a dirty old man, crossed with that voice Jon Stewart does whenever a joke has fallen flat. The opening credits show the gang creating Speed Buggy in some kind of workshop:

"The Devil Car" by Roger Zelazny. Cars have gained the ability to think for themselves. But some evil cars kill their drivers using carbon monoxide, so they can drive around the canyons of the West, kill pedestrians for sport, and steal fuel wherever they can. Our hero, Murdock, takes his sentient car Jenny to hunt down the meanest of these bastards on four wheels: the Black Caddy, who leads a pack of smart cars gone bad. The Black Caddy keeps a dead human in his driver's seat to fool people.

Jenny is torn between obeying her human driver and joining up with the strong, independent Black Caddy. In the end, the Caddy and Jenny wind up in a duel to death, using guns and armor and plain old car-on-car action. This story was broadcast as an episode of Mind Webs, an audio science fiction anthology broadcast on WHA Radio in Wisconsin. If you beg the webmaster of that site, you might get to hear an mp3 of it in the site's "Listening Booth."

Cars. Is it ever explained in this Pixar movie what happened to all the people? Why are the cars suddenly able to think for themselves? Could this be the world after the Black Caddy finally succeeded in wiping out all humans and creating a carefree car paradise? More importantly, what if you were transported to the Cars universe and felt sexually frustrated? Would you eventually give in and have sex with one of the cars? Here's somebody who's given this question a lot of thought.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Dick Van Dyke is a super-genius inventor who buys a broken-down old car that's about to be destroyed, and he upgrades it to the point where it can drive itself and fly. Unfortunately, the guy who played Goldfinger wants it for himself.

The Gadgetmobile. In the live-action movie version of Inspector Gadget, the Gadgetmobile is suddenly all smart, not to mention smart-assed. With the voice of stand-up comedian D.L. Hughley, the Gadgetmobile comes out with sassy one-liners. At one point, Inspector Gadget tells the car to alert him if it sees anything unusual at a science fiction convention. The car replies, "You mean like a Trekkie with a girlfriend?" Ugh.