Oh, and it almost goes without saying, there are some spoilers here — including spoilers for stuff that hasn't come out yet.

The Biggest Spoilers Of 2009:

Isabel Lucas is a Desexycon. One of the weirdest moments in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen comes when the sexy coed who's gone partying with Sam gets him alone... and suddenly has robo-tentacles and stuff. WTF? Turns out she's a robot in disguise. And she's come to try and grab Sam for what he knows about the shard of whatever. Fans were guessing Isabel's actual role early on, but in early January, set video of her stalking across campus as people fled the destruction clinched it. (I honestly can't remember right now which commenter came up with the term Desexycon to describe Lucas, but please let me know who you are, and I'll credit you.)

Oh, and last year we listed "Megatron's coming back in Transformers 2" as one of the wrongest spoilers of the year, because Michael Bay emphatically denied Megatron would be back in the new film. Oh well.

Timothy Dalton is a Time Lord. This one was being rumored on Outpost Gallifrey and other fan forums for months and months... and in mid-June, we got confirmation, in the form of an exclusive leaked picture showing David Tennant, John Simm and Dalton goofing off together. (This was also the first confirmation that Simm was back as the Master.) You can tell the three Time Lords had fun filming these episodes.

We also had a gallery of glimpses inside Matt Smith's TARDIS, and glimpses of the Daleks and Winston Churchill, and set pics of River Song returning. We also had oodles (sorry) of "Waters Of Mars" set pics, including revealing pics of the last scene.

Meanwhile, I still don't know what to make of the set pics we posted, showing David Tennant visiting a bookstore where Verity Newman (Jessica Hynes, the love interest from "Human Nature) is selling a tell-all book about the Doctor. I'm assuming that's in "The End Of Time Part 2," but when? It's a little baffling. Unless this is a deleted scene? See also these set pics, showing Joshua Naismith running out of his house, falling to his knees and looking at the sky in horror. From Part 2, I'm guessing. Also, Donna in a wedding dress, Billie Piper's cameo, Sarah Jane cameo, and appearances by Captain Jack, a Graske, red-and-white aliens, and Midshipman Frame.

Young Scott Summers is in Wolverine. This one's worth mentioning because we labeled it one of the wrongest spoilers of 2008 last year. We were pretty sure it was false, because Fox/Marvel wouldn't be silly enough to overstuff their film with that many irrelevant guest stars... would they? We also had a super-accurate early synopsis of the film. As one commenter wrote, "I want to kick someone in the knuts after reading that."

Yeoman Rand could be in Star Trek 2. At least, we got Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman to talk about the likelihood that there'll be more strong female characters in the second Trek. They said a version of Janice Rand turning up was a definite possibility, since they're going back and re-watching all the old episodes. And maybe Uhura will be more than just a love interest too? We also reported the future destruction of Romulus and past destruction of Vulcan.

Ianto Jones dies in Torchwood, "Children Of Earth". We labeled this a "wild rumor" and said it shouldn't be taken seriously. Shows what we know. We still wish we'd been right.

Juliet dies on Lost. To be fair, it was the bookies that figured that one out. Also, Locke is definitely dead for good. We've also had oodles of details about the filming of season six in morning spoilers lately — almost every post has had new set pics or details of the alternate universe where Flight 815 landed safely.

Arnold Schwarzenegger gets a cameo in Terminator Salvation. But only as a CG face, and not in the flesh. Also, toy pics revealed pretty early that Marcus Wright was a cyborg. It's also worth mentioning that this was the movie where spoilers saved us from a terrible ending — in which John Connor dies and has his face transplanted onto Marcus Wright. After that ending leaked, they changed it to a slightly less terrible one.

Alan Tudyk is Alpha. Fansites were reporting that Tudyk was playing Dollhouse's mysterious villain/savior for months, and then a photo finally confirmed it. And yay. Although we got confused and thought Tudyk was in the same season finale as Felicia Day — they were actually in two different season finales, one which aired and one which didn't. Also, an "April Fools" video gave away early that Paul Ballard goes from FBI agent to Echo's handler.

We may already have met Iron Man's arch-enemy. The jury's still out on this one, but Faran Tahir, who played Raza in the first movie, started hinting last Spring that his character could turn into the Mandarin, the supervillain with ten rings who's the bane of Tony Stark's existence.

Avatar is Dances With Wolves in space. James Cameron came out and admitted it was true, back in August.

Leonard Nimoy is William Bell. (Yay!) But his storyline will be scaled back drastically to accomodate Nimoy's schedule. (Boo.)

Someone commits suicide on Stargate Universe. Robert Carlyle inadvertently gave away the "murder mystery" in episode six, "Justice," several months early.

The Wrongest Spoilers Of 2009:

The Decepticons try to conquer the universe. If only. A fan reported that a phone survey asked them how they'd respond to a possible storyline for Transformers 2, and it included Starscream raising a giant Decepticon army and setting off to conquer the universe, with only the handful of Autobots to stop them. I'd watch that. Also, Michael Bay said the robots have more personality this time, and you'll be able to tell what's going on in the action scenes.

Also, someone leaked a supposed screenplay for Transformers 3, which was pretty obviously fake. Insert your own joke about how there can't be an early script because Michael Bay films first and writes the script afterwards.

The TNG cast all turn up in Star Trek. We had a strong inkling this was wrong — but one of the writers of the IDW prequel comic (which does feature TNG characters) hinted strongly that the Next Gen crew make a brief appearance in the movie, when we learn about the future that Spock traveled back from. As nice as it would have been to see Picard again, it's probably just as well this movie didn't overdo the cameos. Also, Sulu is the Enterprise's counselor. What?

Brian Blessed is ODIN! BY THE SKY BEARD! I'm still sad about this one. I mean, I love Anthony Hopkins, but you know he's going to phone it in, just like John Malkovich does whenever he's in a genre movie. And Brian Blessed never phones anything in — he brings a megaphone, stands next to your head, and SHOUTS IT IN. Is it too late to have a campaign?

We'll revisit the scary piano basement. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' Brian Austin Green promised that we would get some answers about what on Earth was happening with Derek in the future, with the scary basement with the piano music. And unless I totally missed it, we never went there. (Was Charlie Fischer in the scary basement? Except that didn't happen to "our" Derek.) We need basement answers! We also misinterpreted some comments from Garret Dillahunt to mean John Henry was definitely Skynet. Oh well.

Batman 3's script leaks! Thank goodness, we were pretty sure this was a fake from the beginning. It features "Joker gangs" rampaging across a benighted Gotham which is suffering from power brown-outs, and the police call in their special consultant, Edward Nigma, who speaks in riddles.

Spider-Man 4 features Carnage AND Electro. We really, really hope this one is false. It sounds like it's not happening, based on recent statements by Sam Raimi. But a synopsis for the fourth film, posted by an Australian cinema chain, claimed that both of these villains would be vamping their way through another overstuffed sequel.

Kate's Getting Killed Off On Lost. Rumors were flying that Evangeline Lilly was leaving the island-castaway drama a year early, and the actor was auditioning for new TV pilots. Also dying? Sawyer. These rumors obviously referred to a different timeline, in which the hydrogen bomb went off in someone's car or something. Also, we'll meet Aaron all grown up, on the island, in 2030. (Although this could still happen, I suppose.)

Neil Gaiman is writing for Doctor Who. The same message-board sources who said Timothy Dalton was a Time Lord also said the Coraline author would join the Who writing staff in 2010. Also, Britain's most reliable tabloid, the Sun, reported that 2010's episodes will include a storyline in a museum where the Doctor battles Hitler's stormtroopers, plus rampaging monsters, and an episode based on Mark Gatiss' novel Nightshade. Pretty sure that's not true. Also, we reported a rumor that the specials would include Ice Warriors, fish people and the Doctor's daughter. No, wait. I mean "The End Of Time" will include the Sontarans and the Tractators. Oh, and "The End Of Time" part one ends with the Time Lords arresting the Master, and Donna's eyes burning.

Dominic Monaghan plays Beak in Wolverine. I'm not actually sure whom he played, but it wasn't Beak.

Claire's bio-mom is alive on Heroes. Actor Jessamyn Gilsig said she didn't actually die in that big Primatech fire, and hinted her character would probably be back. And for once, someone actually stayed dead on this show. We also reported Daphne wasn't really dying.

Venkman will be a ghost in Ghostbusters 3. The rumor came directly from Sigourney Weaver, but it's been pretty widely debunked.

Walter plays matchmaker on Fringe. Walter will be trying to get Olivia and Peter together — but they may turn out to be brother and sister. Huh?

The squid is definitely in Watchmen. Okay, so this was a spoiler we reported in 2008, not 2009. We're still annoyed, though.

Additional reporting by Mary Ratliff.

Also, be sure to check out Super Punch's previous contests, including Star Wars horror and science fiction nose art.

[Super Punch]

The Little Marmaid by Shane Parker
Snow White and the Seven Techno-Dwarves by Cormac McEvoy
The boy who cried Cylon by Jacob Green
"Damn it Jim, I'm a doctor, not a horticulturist!" by Dean Reeves
Rapunzel in Outer Space by Shannon Reeves, age 11

The One "Wild Things" Change That Bothered Maurice Sendak
When Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers set about adapting Where The Wild Things Are into a movie, Maurice Sendak encouraged them to take a free hand and change stuff. But Eggers and Jonze tell us one change made Sendak nervous.

Anne Dick Talks About "The Search for Philip K. Dick"
Anne Dick, the third wife of Philip K. Dick, still lives in the house she shared with the legendary and mysterious writer. I visited her there to talk about her new memoir, The Search for Philip K. Dick.

5 Things You Didn't Know About District 9
There's a lot more to District 9 than just exploding Tesla guns. Did you know one actor played all the aliens, plus some major scenes were improvised? We list the top things you should know about the new alien epic.

The Real Reason Marlon Wayans Passed On Playing Robin
We talked superheroes with the all-new "real American heroes," Marlon Wayans and Channing Tatum, and found out the real reason Marlon wasn't cast as Joel Schumacher's Robin - and why he couldn't pull off the "motorcycle in the rain" scene.

Joss Whedon On The Dark Secret At The Heart Of His Worlds
How much darker can Dollhouse get, now that we've glimpsed the end of everything? Just how far will Joss Whedon go to explore the themes of searching for identity against impossible odds? We asked Whedon. His answers may shock you.

Zoe Saldana Talks Na'Vi To Us
After Avatar showed off its 3-D bestiary to an awe-struck Comic Con crowd, we cornered the blue Na'vi princess Neytiri, Zoe Saldana herself, and asked her to talk a little native tongue to us. The results were phenomenal.

David Marusek Explains the Final Demise of the Middle Class
David Marusek's intriguing new novel Mind Over Ship explores a post-human future where corporations battle to control the fate of generation ships. We've just interviewed Marusek about the intriguing socio-political world of his novel.

How 9/11 Changed Watchmen
The horrific visions that open the final chapter of Alan Moore's Watchmen haunt you long afterwards. But Zack Snyder's movie tones down that imagery, and screenwriter David Hayter says it's because of 9/11. Spoilers below.

Grant Morrison Tells All About Batman and Robin
With the second issue of DC Comics' Batman and Robin released today, we asked writer Grant Morrison why we need a new Batman, how sane Bruce Wayne really was, and whether Batman is actually sci-fi or not after all.

Duncan Jones Says "Moon" Is Our Real-Life Future
We sat down with Moon director Duncan Jones and talked evil robots, scientific inspirations behind the film and how science fiction needs to catch up to comic book movies. Check out the full video interview and new clips from the film.

The Battlestar Galactica Finale You Didn't See
The Battlestar Galactica ending you saw last Friday wasn't the one that creator Ronald D. Moore originally had in mind. RDM told us how the show could have ended: with one pissed-off, grudge-holding cylon.

Meet Real-Life Supervillain Society ROACH
Ever since the real-life Allegiance of Heroes of Cincinnati crawled out into the light, we've been patiently waiting eventual rise of real-life Supervillains, and today is that day. Meet ROACH, the finest super villain society.

MultiReal Is Your Dot-Com Nightmare Writ Large
David Louis Edelman's future-business saga MultiReal was one of the books that blew us away the most in 2008. So we had to ask Edelman why his vision of capitalism is so scary.

The Shatner Scene You Never Saw In Abrams' Star Trek
You've heard why Shatner's Kirk wasn't included in Star Trek. (He was dead, for one thing.) But Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman tried to write him in, and they walked us through their Shatner scene.

The 3 Laws May Not Be Enough To Guide Robot Warriors
What does the Pentagon think about a possible robot uprising? Is Star Trek's view of combat realistic? We asked P.W. Singer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and author of Wired for War.

Josh Friedman Talks The Philosophy Of Sarah Connor
After last Friday's episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles vibrated our brains to pieces, we were bursting with questions for creator Josh Friedman about the show's philosophy and creative process. Luckily, he answered them.

Peter S. Beagle On Unicorns, Golems, and the Law
We Never Talk About My Brother is a newly-released collection of fiction by the celebrated Peter S. Beagle. We recently caught up with the writer to talk books, lawsuits, and life.

Warner Bros. Forced Watchmen's Laurie To Go Cold Turkey
The Watchmen movie pays insane attention to the graphic novel... except the main accessory in superheroine Laurie Juspeczyk's life, her opium-pipe-looking smokes. Why do the movie's supermen get to smoke, but not the superwomen?

Ming-Na On Being The First Lesbian To Step Out Of The Stargate
Ming-Na's Stargate Universe character isn't just stepping through a portal into another galaxy, she's coming out of the closet. She tells us about playing Stargate's first openly gay character, and how this show is about to get a lot sexier.

Best:

10. The Road

One of the most significant SF-themed literary novels of the past decade, Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic epic, was adapted into an arthouse film starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. And while the novel's themes didn't quite work as well in a movie format, and we had serious issues with the movie's sentimentality, we still found the movie's post-apocalyptic vision compelling. In an era where the apocalypse strikes inside cinema with alarming regularity, this was the grimmest and most unflinching look at a world where every ounce of green, and almost every spark of human kindness, has been destroyed.

9. Gamer

This film, on the other hand, may have boasted slightly less of a literary pedigree. But if you love over-the-top, crazy exploitation films with a satirical edge — and we certainly do — then this tale of remote-controlled killers and sexbots will surprise you. It's easy to see why Gamer never got its props: It's crude, nasty, and full of day-glo wigs. But its plot, about a new biotech called "Nanex" that can replace your brain cells with remote-control devices that can never be removed, is creepy. And the architect of this evil scheme to own your brain? Is Dexter (Michael C. Hall). Who does a song-and-dance number about how much he enjoys yanking your synapses around. Really.

8. Coraline

Veering back towards literary adaptations, there's Henry Sellick's gorgeous version of Neil Gaiman's Hugo award-winning horror/fantasy book. Forget Avatar — this was the most visually striking use of 3-D this year, and it was in the service of a story that felt like a classic fairy tale.

7. Drag Me To Hell

Thank goodness Sam Raimi decided to take a break from Spider-Man movies and return to his horror roots, with this amazingly snarky, Evil Dead-esque journey into the heart of class insecurity. Charlene, a young loan officer at a bank, is desperate to advance up the corporate ladder and escape her hick past, not to mention impress her boyfriend's snobbish family. So she decides to deny a home loan to an old woman — who turns out to be the wrong person to mess with. As we said in our review, "Like all good horror, Drag Me To Hell takes real-life fears, dresses them up in blood-soaked costumes, and sets them running."

6. Paranormal Activity

As we mentioned, this was the year of low-budget movies that focused on a few unforgettable characters, and this film managed to turn a low budget into maximum scariness. As we wrote in our review, "Nothing ever felt like padding or gratuitous "we're going to amp up the tension with cheap jolts" bullshit. The terror was raw and real - all the more so because it was so understated." But the real horror in this film is the dysfunctional relationship at its core, between a woman stalked by a demon and the boyfriend whose antics wind up making things much worse.

5. Zombieland

This post-apocalyptic comedy swept us away with its cool style points — Columbus' rules for surviving the zombie apocalypse, Tallahassee's creative zombie-killing techniques — but it really won us over with its clever romance between Columbus and Wichita, and the way it conveyed the experience of geeky coming of age against a chaotic backdrop. Like all the best road movies, it's about the journey.

4. Avatar

James Cameron's long-awaited out-of-body-experience movie was everything we were expecting: It was just as clunky and preachy as his original "scriptment" suggested it would be, and the native peoples were just as much of a "noble savage" stereotype as we'd expected. But it was just as beautiful and thrilling as we'd expected, too. People have been in the habit, lately, of saying that Avatar has great special effects and a terrible story — but in addition to the incredible CG world-building, the film also does have some thrilling performances from Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington, in particular. It's not just the cool flying dragons that suck you in — it's the characters.

3. Star Trek

Gene Roddenberry's optimistic space opera needed a long rest after the blunders that were Enterprise and the last two movies. In fact, we weren't sure Trek's tired old saws ever needed to be brought back. But J.J. Abrams somehow managed to make Trek seem fresh again, mostly by giving Kirk and Spock a new backstory. Unexpectedly, we found ourselves caring what happened to these guys again, and the scene where Sarek finally admits he married Amanda because he loved her is surprisingly powerful. For the first time in too long, Star Trek became a universe where anything could happen — even the destruction of Vulcan. Who knew Trek could be unpredictable?

2. Moon

Sam Rockwell brought enough conviction and character for twenty actors to this story of a lonely worker trapped in a lunar mining outpost. His loneliness and brushes with madness are captivating — and that's even before there turn out to be two of him at once. By the time this psychological thriller unravels into a story of an evil corporation treating its workforce as a disposable commodity (literally), we're so wound up into Sam Bell's loneliness and yearning to go home that the fate of both Sams becomes more urgent than the fate of entire worlds.

1. District 9

It's easy to think of this film as just a polemic against Apartheid and the mistreatment of refugees — but the story of aliens herded into shantytowns is much more than that. The story of Wikus Van De Merwe, a total bastard who enjoys watching alien children pop like popcorn, feels uncomfortably like our story. After Wikus gets infected with some kind of alien goo, he starts to discover what it's like to be one of the downtrodden aliens, but this revelation doesn't particularly make him a more noble person, at least not for most of the movie. Brilliant production design adds to this film's sense of stark realism, and even some ugly Nigerian stereotypes fail to detract from the film's unforgettable portrait of human cruelty and alien family values. This was the film, more than other, that stuck in our heads long after watching it.

Honorable mentions: I really wanted to give a shout out to Men Who Stare At Goats and Push, two films that got unfairly panned this past year. Goats is way more fun than people gave it credit for, and had occasional moments of total brilliance, especially from Jeff Bridges. Push is stylishly shot in Hong Kong, full of homages to Wong Kar-Wai, and features world-builiding about mutant powers and secret organizations that feels lived-in and clever.

Worst:

10. Surrogates

This film could have been terrific — based on a brilliant graphic novel written by Robert Venditti, this "shut-ins go out in robot bodies" epic is a potent metaphor for our relationship to technology. Unfortunately, the film version, starring Bruce Willis, is a cluttered, clunky mess. It's every dumb action-movie set piece jammed together with bits of chewing gum, plus an incredibly preachy screenplay that doesn't trust the audience to reach conclusions on its own. And that's really the worst sin a dystopian movie can commit: force-feeding us messages, because the dystopia isn't powerful enough to reach us on its own.

9. The Fourth Kind

Even as Paranormal Activity was making the Blair Witch-style "real-life recordings" vibe seem fresh again, The Fouth Kind was trying to pass off fake alien abduction tapes as real, and unfortunately the film-makers put more effort into trying to hoodwink the press than they did into crafting a compelling movie. The actual film is a mish-mash of bad "archival" footage, unscary alien abductions, and flaky plot twists like the idea that a professor can speak ancient Sumerian because he's seen some texts.

8. New Moon

There's something to be said for a book and movie franchise that has converted so many new people, especially girls, into SF/fantasy lovers. But still, this movie slathered us with cheese and bored us with long stretches of Bella moping after Edward, who's decided they can't be together. Edward starts appearing to Bella, Obi Wan-like, as she becomes an adrenaline junkie and runs around with shirtless Jacob. The moments where the film winks at the audience, or veers into outright self-parody, can't quite make up for the goopiness of much of the rest.

7. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

If we had a crane with a camera on it following us around all the time, we would feel tempted to look up at the ceiling and howl as well. Where can we get one of those? The fourth film in the X-Men saga continued X3's slide into mediocrity, with too many random mutant cameos and a campy mutant self-discovery plot that felt instantly forgettable, even without a memory-erasing magic bullet. At no point in this endless film do Logan and Sabretooth feel like brothers, and we don't really care which one of them kills the other. Is there any way that Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool movie can make up for this disaster? We can only hope.

6. The Time Traveler's Wife

We loved Audrey Niffenegger's clever, disciplined time-travel novel just as much as we hated the schlocky, smug movie version. The film excised some of the coolest parts of the novel, and substituted a lot of cookie-cutter romantic-dramedy whininess and angst. What was a classic love story, as well as a insightful look into the way in which we're all time-travelers because we're constantly reliving our pasts and dreaming of our futures, becomes a mindless (and heartless) exercise in pouting as character development. All the more disappointing, because it had such great material to work with.

5. 2012

It's tempting to give this film a free pass, because who expected greatness, or anything other than explosions, from Roland Emmerich's umpteenth disaster film? But it's worth calling out this film for its brain-dead destruction porn and focus on special effects to the total exclusion of characters, or anything really. Bad science, bad writing, bad acting... but most of all, it's kind of boring, and you really have to turn off your brain to enjoy any of it. To quote from some of the comments in our review: "I didn't care who lived or died," "I felt dead inside," "My problem with this movie isn't the rampant destruction, but the boringness in between."

4. Knowing

Making fun of a Nic Cage movie these days almost feels like challenging a dyslexic to a spelling bee. But really. This film was so insultingly bad, that we can't let it slide. Cage plays a college professor, whose idea of teaching astrophysics is to hold model planets and say stuff like, "Hey, man. The sun is like, really, really hot. Did you ever think that maybe things happen for a reason?" It's like stoner astrophysics 101. And then he gets hold of a time capsule from the 1950s that's full of numbers which somehow predict every disaster, including the end of the world. Even if you can ignore coincidences like a plane crashing next to the highway where Cage is driving, you'll be clutching your head by the time this movie's final plot twist is revealed. If this is Knowing, then ignorance really is bliss.

3. Pandorum

Zombies infest a spaceship — how could that be bad? Well, um... how about if it's zombies on a spaceship where Dennis Quaid is doing a crappy pastiche of Fight Club? How then? We never knew space madness could be so boring. Actually, the biggest problem with this film isn't Quaid's endless freak-out, or the random cannibal guy who's diagrammed the entire plot in graffiti, it's the boredom. The makers of the film seem to have mixed up suspense with "nothing happening for long stretches," as our heroes skulk around dark tunnels endlessly. It could have been so much better, if the themes of reclaiming your pride as an officer and sticking together had been foregrounded. Even a cool ending can't save this stew.

2. Terminator Salvation

We debated whether to include T4 among the worst letdowns of the past decade — but there were already so many from 2009 on the list. It's shameful to admit it now, but we expected more from this film, thanks to the reunion of The Dark Knight's star and writer, Christian Bale and Jonathan Nolan. Instead, what we got was the giant head of Helena Bonham Carter delivering exposition. Sam Worthington does his best with the role of Marcus Wright, who discovers he's a cyborg, but he's hobbled by a nonsensical plot. And Bale is a major disappointment as John Connor — it's hard to believe anyone could make us miss Nick Stahl.

1. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

We celebrated this film as the ultimate apotheosis of Bunuel-style surrealism, but if you're expecting it to make a lick of sense, you might as well expect ants to climb out of your hand. Honestly, 2012 only wishes it could be as dumb, as massive — and yes, as boring — as this clunker. These robots can turn themselves into anything — except for compelling characters. And unlike 2012, in which the action set pieces are the punctuation in between long boring sequences, this film's action sequences are the most boring part, because it's hard to tell what's supposed to be going on, and we don't really care anyway. If 2009 was the year that giant CG rainbow showers finally conquered movie screens, then Transformers 2 was the worst offender.

The site, started by Nick Ottens, features loads of extensive behind-the-scenes info on the Gene Roddenberry franchise, including interviews with production staff like Syd Mead, who worked on Star Trek: The Motion Picture before he put his touch on Blade Runner and Tron.

Aside from an oral history of the show, the site has a an impressive library of concept art, sketches, and photos from the making of the original show up to Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. It's a visual resource every Trekkie should bookmark.

Here's some of our favorite stuff:

Ever wonder what Matt Jefferies's rough drafts looked like of the Enterprise? Forgotten Trek has 'em.

The Enterprise went through a few face lifts before it became the ship we all know and love.

This version from Jefferies has an eerie Death Star vibe to it. Interesting since, when Jefferies made the illusrations, Star Wars was still 11 years away.

An illustrated model of the space glider that became a symbol of sci-fi gone mainstream.

In this rendering of the Enterprise's interior, the ship has way more leg room than what was screened on televisions nationwide.

The sick bay. We're not entirely sure what's going on here. A gynecological exam?

A section of the sick bay, re-envisioned by Andrew Probert, senior illustrator on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Fred Phillips works on Leonard Nimoy's Vulcan extreme makeover.

Enterprise seats clearly inspired by Eero Saarinen's Tulip Chair.

Storyboard of Spock's spacewalk in Star Trek: The Motion Picture as imagined by David Negron.

Here are the most viewed trailers of the year, according to Yahoo:

10. Up

9. Avatar

8. Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

7. Star Trek

6. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

4. Terminator Salvation

3. 2012

2. Transformers

1. New Moon

[Yahoo via Rope of Silicon]

Researchers at Imperial College London are working to create an alcohol-like drug that would let imbibers experience a pleasant state of inebriation without worrying about becoming drunk, hungover, or physically addicted to the substance. Led by controversial neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt, the team is looking at benzodiazepines — such as the main ingredient in Valium — to achieve the desired effect. Nutt envisions a world where drinking is safer, with fewer of the accidents and incidents currently related to alcohol.

The advantages of benzodiazepines, according to Nutt, is that they don't affect the brain's addiction centers in the way alcohol does and that they can be easily purged from the body with an antidote. Effectively, if Nutt's research pans out, he claims that drinkers would be able to "switch off" the effects of the faux alcohol by ingesting a pill.

Nutt and his fellow researchers are currently trying to find the benzodiazepine that most closely mimics the effects of alcohol. However, he is concerned that — even if he is successful — European governments will refuse to permit the sale of benzodiazeprine "alcohol," since benzos don't enjoy the same privileged history that alcohol does.

Alcohol substitute that avoids drunkenness and hangovers in development [Telegraph via reddit]

Chances are, you've come across lots of SF stories where a disabled person regains the ability to walk in some fantastical way. Usually it's a guy, and his ability to stand up on his two legs is portrayed as a reclaiming of his virility and power. Often times, the disabled hero regains full mobility along the way towards becoming super-powered — or as part of a package of superpowers.

Oftentimes, the regained mobility comes from some kind of fancy assistive technology. And yet, these stories always draw a really sharp distinction between the wheelchair (which is also assistive technology) and this other tech, which is better or more natural. Or more rugged and manly, perhaps. (Both Jake Sully and John Locke defiantly say something along the lines of, "Don't tell me what I can't do.")

So here are 20 characters from science fiction who regained the ability to walk:

Star Trek gives us Captain Christopher Pike, who's stuck in a wheelchair and unable to express himself other than by flashing a light "Yes" or "No." (As Evan Dorkin tweeted yesterday, "Nice 23rd cent tech there, btw. Beep. Boop. Stupid Star Trek.") Captain Pike's mind is still alive in there, but nobody's figured out a way for him to use Morse code, or translate his brain activity into speech. So Spock takes matters into his own hands, risking his own career and Captain Kirk's command to help Captain Pike return to Talos IV, the planet of the obscene craniums. There, Captain Pike can live in a kind of dreamworld for the amusement of the sterile Talosians, but at least he'll be perfectly healthy.

Doctor Who has had lots of wheelchair-bound characters, including the evil Davros and the vicious Collector. But the first character to rock a wheelchair in Who was actually one of the good guys — Dortmun, one of the leaders of the anti-Dalek resistance in "Dalek Invasion Of Earth." Dortmun is confined to a wheelchair due to one of his many failed attempts to devise an anti-Dalek explosive. And not coincidentally, he's a terrible leader whose super-explosives never do what they're supposed to. But then Dortmun finally redeems himself, confronting the Daleks and buying time for the others to escape — by climbing out of his wheelchair and standing to face the Daleks at last. His redeeming act of heroism is clearly linked to his abandonment of the chair. (Skip to about 2:30 in the video.)

Batman gets his spine broken in the Knightfall crossover, by the supervillain Bane. Throughout the extremely long Knightquest storyline that follows, Bruce Wayne walks with a cane or travels in a wheelchair. He searches for Tim Drake's parents, despite the warnings of a spinal surgeon that he's only making his spine damage worse and more incurable. Luckily, his new girlfriend, the altruistic Dr. Shondra Kinsolving, turns out to have magical healing powers, and she heals Batman, giving herself irreparable brain damage in the process. There's a lot of lightning involved, okay? We're all so glad to see Bruce smack around the blond imposter, we don't really care how Bats got his back back. I actually bought the novelization of Knightfall for $1.00 because I was curious to see if Denny O'Neil would make Batman's recovery make any sense whatsoever. Here's how O'Neil writes it:

"Shondra, we've got to get away from that window," Bruce said. "I can't move, so you'll have to —"

"Don't worry," Shondra whispered. "You'll be fine."

Her hand slipped over his, and her fingers tightened slightly. He felt as though she were touching every cell of his body at once — soothing, quieting, healing. The world went away, then, ebbed away from him, and he was left alone with Shondra's touch in a place where there was no pain and terror.

And that's it. The next time we see Bruce in the novelization, he's "shirtless, barefoot, moving as easily and gracefully as he ever had in his life," with the sun on his shoulders.

The X-Men's leader, Professor X, is in a wheelchair — except for all the occasions in which he's been able to get out of it. At one point, Professor X gets the Starjammers' physician, Sikorsky, to clone him a new body with no disabilities. At another point, the mysterious Xorn "heals" Professor X using his special powers over metal — until it turns out that Xorn is really Magneto, and he's just been dicking Professor X around.

Gallilee by Clive Barker features a first-person narrator, Maddox, who's been in a wheelchair for 150 years, ever since he was maimed in an accident. An apocalyptic vision causes Maddox to realize time is running out, causing him to write down his family history — and then he has a spiritual epiphany, which in turn causes him to realize he can walk once more.

The Animorphs freak out after their identities are discovered by the evil Yeerks — and they decide to recruit some more kids to join their team, in case the original members all get captured. So they decided to recruit disabled kids to be the new group of Auxillary Animorphs, because they figured the Yeerks wouldn't have bothered to infest a disabled kid. (So the Animorphs could skip the three-day screening period for new recruits.) And they figure the morphing powers would cure any disabilities. The leader of the Auxillary Animorphs, James, is paralyzed, until he becomes and Animorph and regains full mobility.

The Doom Patrol features its own version of Professor X, the disabled scientist Niles Caulder. And just as Grant Morrison got Professor X out of his wheelchair, Morrison did the same for Niles in the early 1990s. In one issue, Robotman rushes to tell Niles that somebody's shot Joshua. Niles Caulder says (from off panel) "Cliff, Cliff, Cliff. Isn't it obvious?" And as you turn the page, you discover that Niles is standing up, and revealing that he's the one who shot Joshua. It turns out that nanotechnology cured Niles, although later he winds up as just a severed head — and finally, he's back in the wheelchair, with a complete body again.

The Talents by Anne McCaffey includes a character named Peter Reidinger, whose spine is damaged after a wall falls on him, paralyzing him for life. Until Peter realizes he's actually a powerful telekinetic, and he teaches himself to walk by moving his own limbs telekinetically.

Star Wars: Commenter db4dbms points out that Darth Vader is basically a torso inside a robotic exoskeleton, since Anakin had his arms and legs chopped off.

Robot Wars Book 5: Final Battle by Sigmund Brouwer features Tyce, a 14-year-old whose damaged spine has been hooked up to a device that lets him control robots. Tyce thinks about having an operation that would restore his ability to walk (at the cost of his ability to control robots). But then his toes start to wiggle all on their own, after he kills the first woman president of the United States (by accident, I think.)

Green Lantern John Stewart left the Lantern Corps after his wife got killed, and winds up joining the Darkstars, who have much less cool uniforms. Unfortunately, John gets badly injured defending the planet Rann, and becomes disabled. Until Hal Jordan, in his identity as Assclown — I mean, Parallax — heals John Stewart on his way to reignite the sun and save everyone.

Dark Angel gives us Logan Cale, a steely eyed cyber-journalist who's secretly known as Eyes Only. After Logan is injured in an accident, he's paralyzed from the waist down, and hires a live-in physical therapist named Bling. (Who, I'm just guessing, teaches Logan the healing power of giant medallions?) And then Logan meets a guy named Phil, who has an exoskeleton and agrees to give Logan one. The exoskeleton allows Logan to walk, and say goodbye to Bling!

Xenocide by Orson Scott Card shows Miro, who's been disabled and unable to speak normally, discarding his old body and creating a new one by teleporting Outside. The new body is intact, and allows Miro to do all the things he could do before his accident. (Thanks, TVTropes!)

The X-Files episode "All Souls" features a wheelchair-bound girl, who's able to walk out of her house miraculously. Then she's found dead, in a "praying position" with her eyes burned out — and the same thing may be coming for two other similar girls, unless Scully can work out the whole faith-vs-science thing pronto.

M.A.N.T.I.S., Sam Raimi's short-lived superhero series, features a scientist who's confined to a wheelchair — until he puts on his exoskeleton and becomes the crime-fighting dynamo M.A.N.T.I.S.!

Alpha Flight features Roger Bochs, a double amputee, who can "phase" into giant robot armor, allowing him to walk around and do superhero stuff. Later on, a healer gives him actual fleshy legs. But then it turns out that the healer harvested the legs from corpses, and the graft fails.

The Cure by F. Alexander Brejcha is unusual, in that it's a story about a disabled person being cured, written by an actual disabled person. Brejcha writes, in an author's note, that he's paraplegic, while his main character is quadraplegic. Not surprisingly, it deals a lot more with the main character's insecurity and adjustment problems after nanotech restores his mobility.

Dr. Strangelove regains the ability to walk, thanks to the awesomeness of setting off a doomsday device that ravages the globe.

Lost's John Locke is confined to a wheelchair for four years after his con-man bio-dad tosses him out a window. Locke will never walk again... until he goes to the Island, where he's suddenly healed, and becomes the awesome, rugged outdoorsman he always dreamed of being. In one episode, "The Man Behind The Curtain," Ben taunts Locke that the "old" Locke was so ineffectual, he got kicked off a Walkabout "because you couldn't walk." Locke's regained ambulatory status is linked to his virility and is proof that the Island has chosen him as a special person. Ben, meanwhile, is stuck in his wheelchair for a long time, because he's evil and the Island doesn't like him as much. (Although Ben, too, gets to walk eventually, thanks to Locke's presence.)

The Rampaging Hulk features Geoffrey Crawford, a former teacher of Bruce Banner's, who's suffering from a degenerative nerve disease that has him confined to a wheelchair. Bruce visits his old mentor, seeking a cure for his Hulk-itis, and Dr. Crawford has a complicated plan, involving mapping Bruce's DNA and using a teleporter to separate him from his Gamma radiation — but it's actually a scheme to steal Bruce's powers, so Crawford can Hulk out and escape from his wheelchair. Crawford becomes the monstrous Ravage, and puts the beatdown on the Hulk. Including the great sound effect, "Snap!". Also, in Incredible Hulk, Bruce Banner suffers from ALS, but then Reed Richards miraculously cures him. Then Banner turns to the reader, breaking the fourth wall, and explains there's no cure for ALS in real life and you should donate to research charities. Also, in an episode of The Incredible Hulk TV show, Banner is paralyzed from the waist down, until he Hulks out, which soon heals him.

Heroes' Arthur Petrelli is a rare example of an evil person who overcomes disability, thanks to the power of evil. I've blotted out the events of season three from my mind, but as near as I can tell, Mama Petrelli poisons Papa Petrelli, but he survives — except that he's totally paralyzed and unable to move. Until he absorbs the healing power from Adam/Kensei and becomes an unstoppable evil-eyebrow machine. Also on Heroes, Daphne has cerebral palsy and is unable to walk... until her mutant ability kicks in and makes her the fastest runner in the world, because irony.

Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder. Thanks also to Danny Sichel.

Torrentfreak has named Star Trek as the most torrented movie of the year with nearly 11 million downloads - four million more than last year's "winner," The Dark Knight. Of those 11 million, Paramount claims to have the IP addresses of just over 5 million of them, and they want the FCC to do something about it... Namely, crack down on torrent sites and those who support them, including search engines leading people to them and companies whose advertisements may appear on tracking sites, such as TiVo and Ann Taylor.

With the source of this summer's X-Men Origins: Wolverine bootleg arrested last week and Fox preparing to press charges, it'll be interesting to see whether 2010 sees the studios declare outright war on torrenting and bootlegs, and if so, what form that war will take: Legal action or, in the case of Avatar, movies that demand to be seen in theaters.

[Via TrekMovie]

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Thanks to re-editing Quinto's audiobook version of the movie novelization, the internet now has Spork:

There's even an MP3 version and transcript for those who are allergic to YouTube. Here's an excerpt:

Working his way downward, his fingers appraised, knowingly, precisely. Spock knelt and placed his hands on his chest, driven to his knees by an overwhelming desire. His examining fingers had traveled as far as his thighs. After a long moment he looked up at Kirk. "I am always open to suggestions," Spock declared. Erect in the command chair, Kirk was not surprised to find that he was enjoying himself. "Suck me," Kirk opined plaintively.

You know you want more.

(Thanks, Carla)

SPORK! AN EROTIC LOVE STORY [ONTD_Startrek]

Star Trek Online caused some consternation when they announced:

Klingon Captains have the same number of skills available as their Federation counterparts, including the same professions. Your Klingon Captain can be a Science, Engineering or Tactical officer. However, they must advance through PvP, as they will not have access to the same amount of player-vs.-environment content as Federation players at launch.

That's not to say Klingons won't be a robust faction. While they are PvP-focused, PvP in Star Trek Online is something we designed from the ground up to be a viable advancement path, meaning both Klingon and Federation players can reach a rank of Admiral solely through PvP. Players can engage in team vs. team, Federation vs. Klingon, Klingon vs. Klingon and Federation vs. Federation combat. What's more, certain PvP maps will have PvE objectives over which opposing players can struggle.

Cryptic exec Jack Emmert has this to say to IGN about the unfortunate situation:

The fact is, people make their buying decisions early and he felt it was important to have Klingons in the game, even if they were not as deep as everyone would like, from day one. "If I sit back and wait for it to be perfect, frankly people aren't going to wait around for it," he added.

Bottom line, too bad. The Klingon are going to be boring, or no Star Trek Online. Still the Klingons in the game will have their own ships, bridge officers and territory, if that helps at all.

[via IGN]

We researched the vacation time allotted by present-day corporations, and used that data to figure out how many days off you'd get in an alternate reality or future world.

The Daily Planet (compare with: The New York Times)

Sorry, Clark — The only days you'll have off at the Daily Planet's corporate offices are Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. It doesn't leave a lot of time to get back and forth to Kansas, but you might be able to make it if you're more powerful than a locomotive.

Stark Industries (compare with:Lockheed Martin)

A source within Lockheed Martin informs us that the holidays are represented by days off on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. You'll have limited resources to sketch out your War Machine plans at home, but you'll have plenty of time in the office for experimentation.

Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters (compare with: Solebury School)

Unlike Xavier's school, Solebury has never been destroyed. On the other hand, it merged with the Holmquist School for Girls in 1949, so it has had at least one name-change* in its history since 1925. It's set way back in Bucks County farmland and hosts 220 students this year, none of whom have exhibited a mutant healing factor — Yet. Solebury's Diane Sugden informs us that the Danger Room will be unavailable from December 21st to January 5th.

* Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters became the Xavier Institute of Higher Learning in X-Men Volume 2, Issue 38.

Starfleet Academy (compare with: The United States Naval Academy)

The holiday break at Annapolis starts with the last day of exams, which runs to December 22nd this year according to spokeswoman Deborah Goode. Classes start up again on January 7th, so you'll have a little over two weeks to prepare for the Kobayashi Maru.

Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards (compare with: Derecktor Shipyards)

If you're looking for lots of time off while putting Galaxy-class starships together, you won't find it; Derecktor Shipyards is only down for Christmas and New Year's Day, according to Marketing Director Kathy Kennedy. Hope you enjoyed your vacation time at the academy, cadet — When it comes to shipbuilding, your time is limited.

Greg Cox is one of the most prolific, and successful, authors of media tie-in novels, and he's won a loyal following for his many Star Trek books, including a trilogy filling in the backstory of much-loved villain Khan Noonien Singh. He's also written tie-in novels based on Alias, The 4400, Roswell, Underworld, Fantastic Four and Iron Man. He's also novelized the movies Ghost Rider, Daredevil and several others, plus DC Comics' big crossovers.

We talked to him about his new Terminator Salvation tie-in novel Cold War, out now from Titan Books, plus some of his other recent projects.

Cold War uses the same timeline as McG's recent movie, but only includes a couple of characters from the film: The main character is Losenko, the Russian general who appears briefly in the film, mentioning that Skynet is looking for Kyle Reese, and we learn all about Lysenko's backstory. Says Cox, "When I watched the movie, I was probably the only person who was mentally hanging on every scene with general Losenko," watching for every detail about the character to include in the book. Also in the book is General Ashdown (Michael Ironsides), the resistance leader who lives on a submarine. John Connor only pops in the book as a sort of mythological figure, giving inspirational speeches over the radio.

The new book takes place in Alaska and Russia, in two different time frames: 2003, right after Judgment Day, and then 2018. In 2003, the survivors are coping with the aftermath of the nuclear war, and Skynet is attacking them with really primitive Terminators, and the technology is close to what really existed in 2003. And then in 2018, Skynet has all the same tech it has in the movie — plus snowmobile Terminators, to navigate those frozen northern areas. It sounds like Cox had a lot of fun with the frosty settings:

My big gimmick was snowmobile Terminators. There's also a giant Terminator train. The trick is to try to find stuff in the [same] universe, that's slightly different. What haven't we seen yet? We haven't seen a Terminator train. The main reason for setting it in Alaska [was to include things like] dogsled chases, grizzly bears, avalanches, volcanos... We've seen so many chases on California highways, with fire trucks and emergency vehicles. I was looking for a whole different environment, not just recapitulating what people had done before.

Cox is somewhat surprised that the Terminator/grizzly bear fight has been the main thing people have talked about in his novel. "You can't have a Terminator in Alaska and not have him fight a grizzly bear. Okay, it's gratuitous, but how can I resist having a grizzly bear fight a Terminator?" And now that people have been so excited by it, "from now on, I put a grizzly bear in all my books." Spoiler alert: The bear doesn't stand a chance against a Terminator, says Cox.

There's also a Western-style train heist and loads of detail on a Russian submarine, plus lots of gritty war-movie-style action. Cox watched tons of World War II movies on TCM, read every Tom Clancy novel for the submarine details, and did loads of research on the world right after a nuclear war.

Cox says he watched Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles "religiously," but Titan Books and Halcyon were adamant that his book couldn't contain any references to T:SCC continuity. So don't expect Cameron to show up, but if anyone ever green-lights SCC novels, Cox will be first in line. The Terminator people were very keen to make sure Cox's book fit in with their vision of the universe, including making sure Skynet wasn't developing high technology too early after Judgment Day — and that meant loads of conference calls, notes and intensive feedback at every stage of the process.

Wrapping up The 4400

The amount of feedback you get from the licensors on a licensed property depends heavily on whether it's an ongoing concern, says Cox. With The 4400, for example, Cox wrote one tie-in novel while the series was on the air, and went through four different drafts in response to feedback. But when Cox wrote the first of two novels wrapping up the series after it ended, Welcome To Promise City, he got a more-or-less free hand. (The other novel, available now, is written by David Mack.) Cox, Mack and their editor cooked up an ending to the series together.

Except for tons of feedback from the fans. Cox says as soon as it was announced that he was writing a 4400 novel explaining what happened after the show's cancellation, he was bombarded with emails from fans all over the world demanding to know what he was going to do with their favorite subplots and characters. "I can't claim we wrapped up every loose end, but we tried to wrap up the important one," says Cox. He and Mack debated with their editor whether to tie up the end of the series with a neat bow, or leave a few things slightly open-ended in case they ended up doing more novels. They settled on the second approach, so if the books sell amazingly well, you might see further continuations of the story.

Novelizing Final Crisis

Cox novelized Infinite Crisis, 52 and Countdown for DC Comics, and now he's novelized Final Crisis, Grant Morrison's narrative-shredding uber-crossover starring the evil Darkseid. How on earth do you take Morrison's loopy storytelling and convert it into a single novel?

There was a lot of condensing involved, Cox admits:

There's not a lot of connective tissue in that series. [There are] a lot of scenes that jump from place to place. I've got to admit, the book is probably a bit more linear than the comic book, especially issue seven, which was jumping all over time. I actually just tried to tell it a bit more in chronological order, and maybe simplify it a bit.

The biggest problem with novelizing one of these sprawling DC crossovers is figuring out what subplots and tie-ins to leave out. The first week Cox was working on the Infinite Crisis novelization, he was trying to include all of the spin-off issues, including things like Rann-Thanagar War One-Shot, and every other miniseries and crossover issue, "and I realized this book is going to take me ten years, and it's going to be the size of The Wheel Of Time." So he began paring things down. Similarly, the Final Crisis book ignores a lot of tie-ins, sadly including the 3-D Superman tie-in series. "I apologize if your favorite scene is not in this book, but there's no way I can get in the 3-D tie in superman issue and the Batman issues and the special tie-in issue of Secret Six."

With novelizations of comics crossovers, "it's all about streamlining." It's the opposite of novelizing movie scripts, which is all about fleshing out the story and characters and adding new stuff to turn a 90-page script into a 300-to-400-page novel. "The script for Ghost Rider was not a terribly long script," notes Cox. He recalls coming across the novelization for Snakes On A Plane and marveling that Christa Faust had managed to get 400 pages out of that film. He felt like sending her fan mail.

Should Khan Come Back?

As the author of three Khan books, Cox is conflicted about whether Khan should appear in the next Star Trek movie. On the one hand, recasting Khan seems almost impossible, given how much Ricardo Montalban put his stamp on the character. On the other, Cox might have said the same thing about recasting Kirk, Spock and McCoy — and J.J. Abrams and crew pulled that off. The real question is, "do you do Botany Bay Khan, or crazy burned-out Wrath Of Khan Khan? There's the young virile but not quite crazy Khan, and then there's the obsessed spent-15-years-in-Hell Khan. And then there's the whole messy [subject of the] Eugenics Wars — when exactly did they take place? Did they take place during the Bill Clinton years?"

Cox is writing one of four new novels that take place in the movie's continuity, picking up where the movie left off. He's written a draft of his novel, but hasn't gotten feedback from Paramount yet, so everything is subject to change. But at least for now, his novel takes place six months after the end of the movie, and follows Captain Kirk and his crew on a stand-alone adventure. And he hints that, if Paramount approves, the fact that the Vulcans are refugees scattered across the universe will play a part in his novel's plot.

If you were reading Doctor Who novelizations in the 1970s or 1980s, you'll recognize Achilleos' trademark epic-flames-and-grayscale-heads design. But he also did some great art for other media entities, including this nice Blade Runner image. And if you followed his early, straight-up media SF images, then you would have been startled to see him turn towards erotic pin-ups and fantasy art... but he never lost the splashy sensibility that made his early Who work so memorable.

Sirens, the collection of Achilleos' art, has been out of print for 20 years, but Titan Books just reissued it. Here's the official description:

The second book of fantasy illustrations by Chris Achilleos, Sirens is a feast for the eyes, bursting with full-color art, sketches and development drawings in everything from oil paint to airbrush and inks. Massively popular and highly regarded, Chris Achilleos' glamour and fantasy artwork ranges from his acclaimed Doctor Who and Star Trek book covers to the erotic pin-ups that made him famous, embracing along the way Greek mythology, role-playing games, Tolkien and movie posters for the likes of Heavy Metal. With full-color gallery shots and pin-ups, as well as pencil sketches, Sirens will delight old and new fans alike.

Warning: The last couple images in this gallery might be slightly NSFW, due to sassy breastplates.

Deluxe Editions Of Science Fiction/Fantasy Classics

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Discover The Art Of Science Fiction, And Drool Over Collectibles

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Explore The Wonders Of Science!

Also in non-gallery format, if you click here.

Additional reporting by Mary Ratliff.

This is, of course, just our opinion, and feel free to disagree in comments. We went back and forth about several of these films, and there were a few others that we almost included instead, so we're not claiming infallibility here. If you want to view this in non-gallery format, click here, and I promise it'll work.

Pitch Black. This is nearly the perfect movie — a gritty anti-hero with weird eyes that can see in the dark is on a prison ship, which crashes on an alien planet. The lurking monsters are ominous and alarming, but the film's real mystery is Riddick himself — the Furyan inspires loathing, hero-worship and a desperate longing for the anti-hero to become a hero by the movie's end. Like Riddick's own eyes, our view of him only really works when we see him through total darkness.

Avatar. I'm going to post my review of this film in a few days, closer to its actual release date. But this is definitely one of the decade's most significant science-fiction films, both in its startling new look and in its elaborate alien world. Sigourney Weaver is one of the few heroic scientists we've seen in movies lately, and she fearlessly spouts facts about the science of Pandora. Avatar is by no means a perfect movie — it's a frustrating mixture of brilliance and utter cheese — but it's clearly an important movie in science-fiction history.

Slither. This movie sort of slid (I'm tempted to say slithered) under the radar, but it's one of the great all-time alien possession movies, and a brilliant metaphor for being trapped in a bad marriage. An alien parasite lands in a small town and takes over a woman's awful husband — and then it starts infecting everyone else in town, so that they all speak with the husband's voice. Wherever the wife goes, she hears her husband talking to her. And then people start getting grotesquely pregnant with alien offspring — this sort of thing is really why body horror was invented.

Star Trek. A young hero reluctantly starts to claim his true destined greatness... only to find out that his whole life has been altered, and maybe wrecked, by time-traveling, tattooed maniacs from the future. It's a weird spin on a Star Trek movie, but considering how hard it was to imagine being thrilled by another Trek after Nemesis, this film is a marvel. Plot holes, frat-boy antics, "red matter" and all, it's still the film that recharged Star Trek and may have helped bring back space-opera as a genre. And Spock has never been so... fascinating.

Donnie Darko has garnered an enduring cult fan base, for good reason. Its blend of mysicism and weird physics has aged amazingly well, and we still get lost in its "tangent universes." We keep hoping Richard Kelly will make another film that's both as mind-blowing and as well-constructed as this one.

Robot Stories. Another great movie that didn't get enough props when it came out. Greg Pak, who went on to write the Planet Hulk storyline for Marvel Comics, creates an anthology of three stories about robots that show how much robots are connected to our emotional lives — and what will happen when robots get emotions. In one story, two office robots fall in love, only to find that robot love is forbidden. In another story, a mother becomes determined to help her dying son amass the perfect collection of robot action figures — at any cost, even stealing. You'll see robots in a whole new light after watching this film.

Spider-Man 2. There were a number of superhero films that managed to bring the greatness of comics' storylines to life in the first half of the decade, including two X-Men movies and two Spider-Man movies. For my money, though, this is the best of the bunch, particularly because of Alfred Molina's Doc Octopus. Peter Parker's superpowered angst collides with Doc Octopus' cyborg identity crisis, and both hero and villain seem to be clinging to their identities by a thread. Even though we wish Peter Parker could keep his damn mask on, it's still thrilling and maybe the most perfect straight-up superhero movie of all.

Sleep Dealer. Alex Rivera's look at the dark side of telecommuting is one of the most memorable and intense films we've seen lately. In the future, everything depends on the dollar — you can't even access water reservoirs in Mexico or speak to your family in another town without feeding dollars into a slot. And the only way to get dollars is to get cyber nodes all over your body, allowing your nervous system to pilot machines in the United States. That way the U.S. can import Mexican labor without bringing in actual Mexicans. It's beautifully filmed and harrowing look at the ultimate form of alienated labor.

The Incredibles. The other great straight-up superhero was one of several Pixar films that we wanted to pay tribute to from the past decade. If you were as disappointed as we were by the two Fantastic Four films, then rejoice that this film does the FF right. A surprisingly light-hearted look at super-mutants in a world that learns to fear them, this movie does a better job of portraying what makes superhero comics so awesome than almost any live-action film. And we love the Omnidroid.

The Host. Sorry, Cloverfield — this was the monster-rampage movie we loved from the past few years. Unlike Clovey, the Host actually has a decent if snarky origin story, including weird chemicals dropped in the water by a callous American, causing one of the local creatures to get a little too big (and rambunctious) for comfort. More than almost any other monster movie, this film sucks us into caring about its main characters, a hapless family who operate a failing fast-food stand on the beach — we laugh at their antics and then get hopelessly, tragically, wound up in their fate when they tangle with the monster. Rob and Hud just don't quite measure up.

28 Days Later. Purists may hate this film's "fast zombies," but they're not even really zombies — they're the victims of a "rage" virus that stupid animal-rights activists cause to be released onto an unsuspecting world. Of all the apocalyptic scenarios we've seen in the past decade, 28 Days provides the best dose of terror and the sheer horror of society unraveling. When Christopher Eccleston's vicious soldier says the words, "I promised them women," your gut sinks. And the idea that the rage-virus outbreak will cure itself because the quasi-zombies will starve is genuinely clever. We were tempted to include Danny Boyle's other great SF film of the decade, Sunshine, but 28 Days is clearly better.

Paprika. A parade of nonsense images stomps through a man's dreams, forcing him to jump out a window... and it's just the beginning of the mayhem as the dream world collides with reality, in Satoshi Kon's weird exploration of dreams and their potential to tear our world apart. A machine that allows you to enter someone's dreams therapeutically gets stolen, and soon reality itself is being torn apart. Trippy, insane and mind-expanding, this is a film you need to watch more than once.

Primer. Speaking of films you need to watch more than once... few, if any, science-fiction movies talk down to their audiences less than this one. You don't even realize, for a good chunk of the movie, that the geeky characters are building a time machine. and it comes with very realistic and fascinating limitations, even as it allows the main characters to cross their own timelines over and over again, rewriting history in more and more psychotic ways. The walkman scene makes the whole thing worthwhile, just by itself.

Moon. It's interesting how many of the great science-fiction movies of the past decade are about loneliness, one way or the other — but none of them delve into isolation as hauntingly as Duncan Jones' debut feature. Sam Rockwell is amazing as the two versions of Sam Bell, who's tantalizingly close to finishing out his contract on a lunary mining station — until he finds out that things aren't ever what they seem. Add paranoia to the list of things this film does better than almost any other.

Iron Man. As we wrote when this film came out, it's actually more of a cyborg narrative than a superhero one. Jon Favreau and company wisely chose to focus on the heart of Tony Stark's origin — literally, the fusion reactor that keeps his heart from stopping, and turns him into a part-machine badass whose armor is just a shell that goes over his cybernetic body. Tony Stark's uneasy relationship with the military technology that he created parallels his unease with his new technological body — he's like the heroic flipside of Spider-Man 2's Doctor Octopus. And yes, any movie that talks about our dependence on, and unease with, technology automatically gets to leap over the pile of by-the-numbers superhero films.

The Dark Knight. See here for our argument as to why this film really is science fiction. Shorter version: Batman's fantastical technology is at the heart of the story. If Batman Begins showed how Bruce Wayne used technology to become Gotham's fearsome crime-fighter, then The Dark Knight is about how far he's willing to take that approach in the face of a mad bomber.

District 9. Most science-fiction movies, you come out of furiously debating the science or the finer points of the storyline... but this one, people walked out of speechless and shellshocked. Perhaps the ultimate "humans oppress aliens" movie, this film confronts us with a perfect allegory of our own inhumanity, through the story of a crashlanded group of aliens who are forced into shantytowns. Even before the main character, Wikus, starts turning into one of the aliens, our loyalties are getting more and more divided.

Wall-E. The other Pixar movie we couldn't help including on the list, this may have been the greatest blend of post-apocalyptic dystopia and cute robots. The love between Wall-E and Eve is both lovable and genuinely moving, and the trademark Pixar humor is in full effect with Wall-E's junkyard slapstick and spaceship antics. The funniest, and maybe the best, robot uprising we've ever seen.

Serenity. Just pretend for a second that this wasn't the continuation of a beloved TV series, and that Joss Whedon had created a whole new universe from scratch just for this film — it would still be one of the most audacious, most memorable, science-fiction films of all time. The story of the Alliance, which maintains a tenuous grip on a sprawling star system after a brutal civil war, and the lengths to which the Alliance will go to try and make people "better," Serenity is one of the great action-adventure films as well as one of the neatest SF concepts ever. When you discover the secrets of Miranda and see how River Tam becomes both the messenger and the avenger of Miranda's people, it's hard not to jump up and down in your seat.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. How far are you willing to go to get over a lost love? Are you willing to injure yourself — by erasing a huge chunk of your brief time on this planet from your own mind — just to get back at your former lover? This Charlie Kaufman/Michel Gondry joint does what all the best science fiction does: it creates a fictional technology that has the potential to change who we are as people, and then it uses it to tell a deeply personal story. The scenes where Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are wandering through Carrey's childhood memories are both unsettling and poignant, as Carrey tries to hold on to the love he was in the process of throwing away — by letting her into more of his mind.