The Tumblr blog Number One has a healthy obsession with images of Star Trek: The Next Generation's first officer. This week, a handful of webcomics artists have joined in on the fun, creating their own portraits of Riker (and in one case, his transporter twin Thomas).

[Number One via Kate Beaton]

by Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant
by Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant
by John Campbell of pictures for sad children
by Andrew Hussie of MS Paint Adventures and Jandrew Edits
by Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics
by Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics
by Patrick Edwards-Daugherty of Secret Vespers

Let's start by getting all of the superhero stuff out of the way. Depending on how much you love the old stuff, chances are your book of the week will either be the hardcover collection of Batman: Battle For The Cowl (In which Dick Grayson decides to carry on that Dark Knight family business) or the Showcase Presents: DC Comics Presents black and white collection of 1970s Superman team-ups with other DC characters both A-list and long-forgotten. (Me, I'm going for the Showcase, if only for the sweet, sweet Jose-Luis Garcia-Lopez art.)

But there are also collections of DC's Black Lightning Year One, the Blackest Night-trailing Green Lantern Corps: Emerald Eclipse, Marvel's space-epic War of Kings and the tragically-cut-down-in-its-prime Runaways: Homeschooling. If you're looking for something more in the single issue price range, there's always DC's Justice Society Of America 80-Page Giant and Marvel's Dark Reign: The List - Spider-Man. Or the debut of Reign of Kings: Inhumans.

If War of Kings isn't enough space warfare for you, then Dark Horse has the first volume of Alien Legion Omnibus, in the wake of the movie deal announced yesterday. And Boom! has the first issue of its now-monthly Farscape series. And does it get any more space war than Transformers? Well, yes (Their war kind of takes place on Earth, after all), but the first issue of IDW's new monthly series is also released tomorrow.

Staying with the media tie-ins, IDW also has the first issues of the weekly Legion: Prophets and the mini-series Star Trek: The Next Generation - Ghosts coming out. Meanwhile, Dark Horse has the much-anticipated all-new Dr. Horrible special issue to satisfy your Whedon Jones for another week. Dark Horse is also re-releasing Pictures That Tick, a collection of experimental comics by Sandman cover artist Dave McKean that's well worth your time and money.

Last but not least, you can prepare for the horror of Thanksgiving next week with a couple new supernatural books: Boom! have a collection of their great The Unknown detective series, while DC's Victorian Undead puts Sherlock Holmes against zombies to the... whatever comes after death, I guess.

As ever, all of these books and more can be found on the shipping list from Diamond Distributors, while your local comic store itself can be found by using the Comic Shop Locator Service. Do it for reading, you guys.

Spock
Died: Sacrificing himself by bringing the warp engines back online at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, leading to his dying from exposure to radiation.
Undied: His body was resurrected in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock thanks to the Deus Ex Machina powers of the Genesis Planet, and it turned out that his soul had lived on all along thanks to mind melding with Bones.
Cause of Undeath: Mind-meld and blatant plot ridiculousness in order to keep the fans happy. Admittedly, it was all set up in Star Trek II, but still.
Does It Count As Death?: Well, his soul was alive the entire time in Bones, but his body had enough time to go through a funeral and being shot off into space, so... 50/50? But not really, let's face it.

Ellen Tigh
Died: Poisoned by her husband after (in his eyes) betraying humanity in "Exodus, Part II" at the start of Battlestar Galactica's third season.
Undied: Instantly downloaded into a new body as part of the Fifth Cylon retcon, as revealed in the fourth season's "Sometimes A Great Notion."
Cause of Undeath: Traditional cylon download/rebirth.
Does It Count As Death?: Well, she was instantly reborn, which suggests that she was never actually dead as such, but the whole Fifth Cylon thing muddies the waters... especially when she was reborn as someone who wasn't exactly the Ellen she was when she died. We're going with "Kinda, but not really."

Boba Fett
Died: Falling into the Sarlacc's mouth in Return Of The Jedi.
Undied: Climbing back out of the Sarlacc's mouth in comic sequel Star Wars: Dark Empire.
Cause of Undeath: He was swallowed by apparently never chewed or digested and climbed his way out, apparently.
Does It Count As Death?: If you believe Dark Empire, not in the slightest. George Lucas apparently disagrees, however; it's said that he edited Fett's last appearance in the special edition of Return Of The Jedi to make it clearer that it's meant to be the end of the character.

John Sheridan
Died: Avoiding certain death by nuclear explosion at the end of Babylon 5's third season finale, "Z'ha'dum," by jumping into a pit so deep that it was impossible to survive. Oh, and then there was that nuclear explosion, which presumably would've destroyed the pit and everything within it anyway.
Undied: At the start of the show's fourth season, Sheridan was revealed to be in a limbo between life and death because of his love for Delenn. With the help of - and 20 years worth of lifeforce from - helpful fellow limbo-ite Lorien, he comes back to the land of the living.
Cause of Undeath: As Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting would say, choosing life. Who knew it was that simple?
Does It Count As Death?: Nope. Think of it as getting as far as death's foyer, before deciding to turn back because you'd changed your mind.

Tasha Yar
Died: Wanting out of her Starfleet contract early, Denise Crosby got her character killed at the hands of a gloopy, ooky oil monster in the first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation "Skin of Evil."
Undied: Thanks to time travel shenanigans, turns out never to have died in the alternate timeline of third season episode "Yesterday's Enterprise," and then manages to return to the past of the original timeline at the end of the episode in a way that still doesn't make a lot of sense.
Cause of Undeath: Alternate timelines having prevented her from dying in the first place.
Does It Count As Death?: Well, a Tasha Yar definitely died. In fact, as we learn upon the appearance of the second Yar's daughter Sela, the other Tasha was killed unsuccessfully trying to escape from the Romulans, so it looks as if any and all Tashas would end up dead one way or another.

Superman
Died: At the hands of the apparently unstoppable Doomsday in 1993's The Death of Superman storyline.
Undied: Midway through the follow-on The Return of Superman storyline, when it's been revealed that none of the four characters who've taken up the mantle are the real thing.
Cause of Undeath: He woke up. No, really; the audience is pretty much told that he'd never died in the first place, he'd just gone into superhibernation in order to heal from the fight.
Does It Count As Death?: Not at all, but it definitely counted as a moneyspinner for DC Comics, who went on to kill Green Arrow and Green Lantern within the next couple of years, as well as teasing deaths for the Flash and breaking Batman's back.

Bucky
Died: Trapped on a bomb that mentor and Nazi-fighting partner Captain America had managed to jump off of before it exploded, as explained way back in 1963's Avengers series.
Undied: In 2005's "Winter Soldier" storyline of Captain America, where he got reintroduced and prepped to become the new Captain America in 2007.
Cause of Undeath: Turns out that Bucky was, in fact, blown to bits by the exploding bomb... It's just that they were pretty large bits. Large enough to rebuild him into a brainwashed no-good commie assassin who gets put on ice between missions, until he meets Cap, goes rogue, remembers who he is, and then uses his mighty Russian technology for the good of American mankind.
Does It Count As Death?: What's brainwashed Russian assassin for no?

The Flash
Died: Which one? Barry Allen died in 1985's Crisis On Infinite Earths. Wally West disappeared and was, at various times, presumed dead/missing/no-one could make up their mind in 2004's Infinite Crisis, and Bart Allen kicked the bucket in 2007's The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13.
Undied: Wally came back in 2007's Justice League of America #10, Barry in 2008's Final Crisis #1 and Bart in 2009's Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #4.
Cause of Undeath: Both Barry and Wally had, it turns out, never died. Barry had been swallowed into the Speed Force, which is the cosmic... thing... that gives all super-speed characters their powers in the DC Universe, while Wally's fate was ultimately (after a couple of failed attempts that were quickly contradicted) decided upon a variation of "He took his family on vacation to an alien planet and didn't tell anyone." Don't ask. Bart, meanwhile, did die, kind of... but his teenage self was trapped in a futuristic lightning rod and then magically released in the 31st century to fight Superboy Prime. Again, it's probably better if you didn't ask.
Does It Count As Death?: No question for either Barry or Wally (No), but Bart... I have no idea. I've read Legion of Three Worlds multiple times, and still don't understand the explanation that's given there; let's just never mention it again and pretend it didn't happen.

Jason Todd
Died: As the result of a real-life phone vote to see if Todd, the second Robin (as in Batman and), should be killed at the hands of the Joker. Seriously, 1988's comic industry, what the hell were you thinking?
Undied: 2004's Batman revealed that Todd was not only not dead, but had magically aged more than most other characters in the DC Universe in his off-panel absence.
Cause of Undeath: Superboy was punching the walls of reality, and things went a bit weird. You know how it is with these superheroes and their punching the walls of reality; history gets rewritten all over the place. Just be glad that Batman didn't end up as Batdinosaur. Although, now that we think about it, that'd be awesome.
Does It Count As Death?: Magically contradicting Schrodinger and his cat, Jason Todd both did and didn't die. His official history has it that he died, and then just came back to life thanks to the punching of reality, meaning that he was still alive. So, while it ultimately doesn't count as permanent death, there was a death in there somewhere.

Jean Grey
Died: In 1980's famous Uncanny X-Men #137, where she sacrifices herself for the good of the universe to stop herself from becoming overwhelmed by the godlike power she possessed that might lead her to eat a couple of planets if she got peckish.
Undied: It's revealed in 1986's Fantastic Four #286 that the Jean Grey who killed herself was never actually Jean Grey at all, but the Phoenix force, who's been cosmically imprinted with Jean's personality. Don't worry; the Phoenix force was already back by that point anyway.
Cause of Undeath: Jean hadn't died (at that point), and the resurrection of the Phoenix force was somewhat implied by the name - The official explanation was that the Phoenix force hadn't actually died either, just lain dormant until someone else (Jean's daughter from an alternate timeline. If you don't already know, don't ask) claimed it.
Does It Count As Death?: Before the retcon and ruined Chris Claremont's X-Men once and for all you bastards, it did. Now? No-one died until years later, when Jean really got the Phoenix power and then ended up dying anyway. Guess there's something unlucky about the name or something.

Oh, and there will be some spoilers for recent TV episodes here — most notably Fringe.

This is mostly a list of people whose characters died or departed forever, but then they went on to play a totally different character. This doesn't include people whose characters died and then came back to life, which is a totally different trope. (And I'm not including actors who played more than one minor character in a show, or a minor character followed later by a major character.)

Garret Dillahunt on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

This amazingly versatile actor plays Cromartie, a Terminator sent from the future to kill John Connor. And after a season and a half of cat and mouse games, Cromartie finally gets blowed up good. But then his body gets repurposed and used as a UI for the childlike AI known as John Henry. (You could also say the same for Brian Austin Green, but that's slightly different — he came back as the exact same character, Derek Reese. It was just a different timeline where Derek hadn't died (yet.))

Sheryl Lee on Twin Peaks.

Laura Palmer dies (as you may have heard), but then actor Sheryl Lee shows up as Laura's nearly identical cousin Maddy. Good thing they wouldn't kill off the same actor twice... right?

Ali Larter on Heroes.

Larter plays the troubled webcam girl Niki, who's also the psychotic killer Jessica sometimes. But then Niki/Jessica dies... but it turns out Larter has an identical sister named Tracy. (And another one named Barbara, but apparently we'll never actually meet her.) And there's a mad scientist guy involved, who decided to give one sister weird water powers, and the other sister weird "psycho mirror" powers, because hello, mad scientist!

Doctor Carson Beckett on Stargate Atlantis

This jolly Scottish doctor is great at cooking up retroviruses and coming up with last-minute saves... but after he died at the end of the third season, fans were outraged. Good thing he was able to come back as his own clone. Also notable: Elizabeth Weir dies, but comes back as a machine intelligence (although I'm not sure if Torri Higginson ever played the mecha-Weir.)

Kirk Acevedo on Fringe .

This is the somewhat spoilery one: Acevedo's character, Charlie, dies at the end of the first episode of season two. But he's been replaced by an evil (or at least morally suspect) shapeshifter from an alternate world — where, presumably, there may also be another Charlie Francis running around. So we could eventually see Acevedo playing a third character. (And then a fourth, when the shapeshifter impersonates alt-Charlie?)

Amy Acker on Angel.

We were heartbroken when Fred died, but then chilled and shocked when she was reborn as the psychotic demon god Illyria. And then we learned to love her new persona almost (well maybe half) as much as her original one.

Terry O'Quinn on Lost.

Locke appears — emphasis on appears — to be stone dead, although maybe he's alive in another timeline? In any case, after Locke died, someone (or some thing) impersonated him, allowing O'Quinn to stretch his acting muscles and play Locke as, well, kind of a dick.

Denise Crosby on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Oh. The pain. Tasha Yar dies, but then Crosby later reappears as Tasha Yar's daughter (from an alternate timeline) with a Romulan. You see, Picard sent alt-Tasha back in time to the Enterprise-C so it could be destroyed by Romulans and the timeline could be repaired, but alt-Tasha didn't die, and so she shacked up with the Romulans, and... oh, whatever. It's Crosby with pointy ears. Look!

Steve Bacic on Andromeda.

He plays Gaheris Rhade, who betrays Dylan Hunt and is killed in the show's pilot episode — although Gaheris reappears several times in flashbacks and one alternate history episode later. And then in later seasons, Bacic takes on a new character Telemachus Rhade, who's the descendant of Gaheris. (Thanks to Xicer for the heads up!)

Lalla Ward on Doctor Who.

Okay, so Ward's character, Princess Astra, didn't actually die — but she did get written out of the show forever. And then the Doctor's Time Lady companion, Romana suddenly decided to regenerate, and randomly chose to refashion herself into the guise of Princess Astra. You could also mention Anthony Ainley, who played Tremas in "Keeper Of Traken." Tremas died — but then his body got taken over, and he became the new incarnation of the Master — but Tremas was always just intended to be a new host body for the Master.

Katee Sackhoff on Battlestar Galactica.

This is another edge case — Starbuck definitely died, because there was a body. But did she come back to life? Is Sackhoff playing a different character in the final season of BSG? Your theory is at least as valid as mine, because I haven't a clue. Like the video says, "You Will Know The Truth."

Thanks to Alexis Brown, Meredith Woerner, Sam J. Miller, Paul McEnery, Sean Passmore, Katrina James, Rus McLaughlin, Kathleen Warnock, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, S.J. Edewards, David Daw, Debcha, Barclay Sylvester, Karen Meisner, Brooklyn Erica, and "Dillahunt News" on Twitter (is that actually Garret Dillahunt, or a fan?), plus anyone else who helped out.

Deadgirl
What to do when you find a corpse chained to a table, and then discover that said corpse isn't actually dead? If nothing else, this dark comedy horror will make you realize that any answers you'd come up with to that question would be better than what happens here.

Doctor Who: The Next Doctor
Davids Tennant and Morrissey team up to take on Dervla Kirwan's villainous Miss Hartigan as the BBC mysteriously release last year's Christmas special after the already-out Planet Of The Dead special. Well, it is all time-travel, I guess...?

Primeval Vol. 2
The unintended end of the series can be found in this 3 disc box set that, despite the confusing title, actually contains the third season of the now-canceled show.

Sanctuary: The Complete First Season
See? This is how you name your DVD releases, clear and simple. Although, if they'd wanted to be completely descriptive, they would've called it The Complete First Season With Commentaries On All The Episodes, The Original Webisodes And Some Other Special Features. But that may have taken up too much room on the packaging.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Clone Commandos
A second selection of episodes from the first season of the Cartoon Network show that reminds people that, while war may be hell, Star Wars is just a pretty bad heck. Or perhaps a goshdarnit, at most.

X-Men Vol. 3: The Marvel Collection
X-Men Vol. 4: The Marvel Collection
Two more collections of episodes from the 1990s cartoon to remind people that, before there were X-Men movies that didn't match up to the Batman ones, there were X-Men cartoons that didn't match up to the Batman ones. But then again, I liked Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, so what do I know?

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Talking of X-Men movies, here's this summer's installment, allowing you to study the acting talents of Will-I-Am at your leisure. Also, with the ability to skip chapters, you can pretend that Gambit doesn't exist, which will immediately make the movie better.

Sept 22
Battle for Terra
It was the CGI movie you kept seeing trailers for, but don't actually remember seeing in theaters - and now it's out on DVD for you to ignore at home, too.

Clive Barker's Book Of Blood
Yes, yes; it was Books of Blood when the books were originally written, but times are hard for everyone, and movie didn't have the largest of budgets, so some cutbacks were inevitable (It's actually premiering on Syfy this week, for those who want a preview).

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto
If the idea of an animated movie based on a comic book about a superheroic masked wrestler created by Rob Zombie doesn't interest you, maybe the cast list - which includes Paul Giamatti, Rosario Dawson and Brian Posehn - will. Otherwise, we can't help you.

Scooby Doo: The Mystery Begins
Because, sometimes, you need a live action reboot of the Scooby Doo franchise by the man who directed the Flintstones live action movies. Of course, when we say "need," we may be using that word incorrectly. Nonetheless, this direct-to-DVD epic shows the first meeting of Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scoob, and without the disturbing presence of either Sarah Michelle Gellar or Freddie Prinze Jr. So... potential win after all?

Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection Box Set
Star Trek: The Next Generation Motion Picture Collection Box Set
Paramount finds a new way to recycle the Star Trek movies with these new era-specific box sets. We look forward to the inevitable Star Trek: The Good Ones, You Know What We Mean box set within a year (Also: Am I the only one who was surprised to find out that there were four TNG movies, even though I've actually seen them all? I think I subconsciously try to pretend that Insurrection and Nemesis don't actually exist).

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The Complete Second Season
Your chance to relive the only Terminator that mattered this year, despite that whole cancellation thing, with six discs full of episodes, commentaries and special features. Buy it in the hope that someone at Fox will change their mind when they see the sales figures.

Sept 29
Batman Collection: 4 Film Favorites Box Set
Those "film favorites" would be the Michael Keaton/Val Kilmer/George Clooney movies, by the way. It seems fair, because to add in either of the Chris Nolan-era movies - or even the 1966 Adam West one - would make any of these four seem somewhat lacking in comparison (Okay, maybe not Batman Returns).

Blade Collection: 4 Film Favorites Box Set
I know what you're thinking: "There were only three Blade movies, how can they have a 4 DVD box set?" The answer lies in including the pilot for the short-lived TV show in there, which seems like a slight cheat to me, but that's why I'm not a Warners Home Entertainment executive.

Hardware
Finally making it to DVD, Richard Stanley's 2000AD-inspired robot horror movie from 1990 finds a new, uncut and uncensored form to ensure that old-school fans will want to pick it up as well. If nothing else, how often do you see Iggy Pop and Lemmy in the same movie?

Monsters Vs. Aliens
Dreamworks Animation's love letter to old school B-movies proved to be much better than expected when it was released in theaters earlier this year, and the DVD - with special features on the making of the movie, deleted scenes and, bizarrely, a Dreamworks Animation Video Jukebox - aims on taking even more advantage of the impressionable hearts, minds and wallets of kids of all ages.

The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection Box Set
25 discs of animated paranormal activity, as the entire five year run of the 1980s (and early '90s) cartoon (including Slimer spin-off) gets collected in this insanely comprehensive box set that also has twelve hours of special features. You may never have to leave the house again. Or, at least, not for a few weeks.

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
The latest DC animated movie adapts Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness' fun, over the top tale of President Lex Luthor trying to turn the world against our favorite superheroes, only to (a) go insane in the process and (b) lead to the creation of a giant Superman/Batman composite robot. If they've not changed too much, this could be the guilty pleasure of the fall.

Ultraman: The Complete Series
...Or, perhaps, it could be this: A 4 disc box set collecting all 39 episodes of the mid-60s Japanese TV show that brought the madness and production values of Godzilla movies to television on a weekly basis. Robot superheroes versus monsters courtesy of Eiji Tsuburaya? Works for me.

Like the movie preview, we've split this preview into months (and, inside those months, into weekly releases), but with releases still unconfirmed and unannounced, we've pushed November and December together. Don't worry; it'll make sense when you click on the links below.

September
October
November/December

The other day, I was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns — and it turned out to be an episode all about Reg Barclay, the hypochondriac creep who likes to use Beverly Crusher as his holographic blow-up doll. He stars in like twenty episodes of the final season. And then I picked up the latest Buffy comic, and it was all about Andrew, the wet wiccan who inexplicably became one of the show's main characters in its last season. So, seriously: Why do annoying dweebs take over dying shows?

Usually, the arrival of the Andrew/Barclay character is a sign that the writers have run out of stories to tell about the existing cast. Hence the Reg Barclay effect, science fiction's version of the "Cousin Oliver" effect. (Actually, I realized that Reg first starred in an episode back in season three. But he definitely became more prominent in the last two seasons.) And often, this character has a few other notable qualities:

1) He/she is clearly a stand-in for the writers, being nerdy and full of exaggerated insecurity and self-mockery.
2) He/she contains qualities that existing characters already had, but they're pushed up to 11. Like, say, Andrew is like Xander on reverse-steroids, making him even weaker.
3) He/she is often put on some kind of accelerated character arc from clueless to loveable, or from good to evil, because all the other characters have already taken that journey and we need to see someone new take it.

Update: Thanks to all who commented. I had noticed that Barclay's first episode of TNG was in season three, but had been certain that he'd cropped up a lot more in seasons six and seven. But it turns out the Barclay pain was pretty evenly spread throughout seasons three, four, five, six and seven, with a slight spike in season six. He's referenced, but does not appear, in the Worf cowboy episode. So it's more accurate to say he took over Voyager, where he appears in a lot of the later episodes.

Here's our Hall Of Pain, showcasing the Reggiest Reg Barclays of SF television. Feel free to suggest your own additions, or argue with these choices:

The really annoying thing about both Andrew and Reg Barclay, of course, is that they went on to represent their respective shows on the inevitable spin-offs. While the actual cast members of TNG and Buffy were too busy trying to escape from being typecast, we got to revisit both Andrew and Reg on many, many occasions. Whenever Angel needed someone to pop up and be a mouthpiece of Buffy's new Slayer Army, Andrew fit the bill. And the final seasons of Star Trek: Voyager were almost as covered with Barclay's sweaty handprints as the final season of TNG was.

This is a plea to showrunners and TV producers everywhere — please don't Scrappy-Doo your final season. It's not worth it! If you think you're about to be canceled, don't project your anguish and insecurity onto the screen by giving us a character who has ever reason to be insecure. Don't pass your pain onto us, the viewers. And if you've run out of ideas for storylines about your actual main cast, turn them all into cyber-ninja-marmosets. We won't mind. Just please — don't inflict the Reg Barclay syndrome on us.

Note: As with everything in life, this post was greatly enriched by surfing TVTropes.org.

Some people interpreted last week's top 10 list of silly alien prosthetics as hating on low-budget science fiction, or dissing the hard work of makeup artists — and that was definitely not the intention. But when you've seen the same few ideas crop up again and again, you tend to get a bit jaded.

For me, personally, Star Trek in the 1990s and early 2000s ruined me for boring humanoid aliens. After the endless parade of people in vinyl pajamas, with different smushy bits of latex on their faces every week, I got rubber-nose fatigue. There's a lot to love about 1990s Trek — Deep Space Nine was frequently brilliant and prescient, and Voyager had some standout episodes — but the infinite assembly of silly faces was not one of the things I loved.

Oh, and the picture above is from Davosmith's amazing Flickr set of Manchester's Fab Cafe. Here's another image from the same set, featuring another one of the creatures on this list:

So here are ten aliens that were obviously done on a shoestring budget, but which absolutely knock your space boots off:

10. The Daleks, on Doctor Who.

The evil genetically engineered cyborgs on Doctor Who are like mini-tanks with buzzing bee voices, and they scared the pants off generations of British (and some American) kids. They've had their ups and downs — if the first Dalek story you saw was "Day Of The Daleks," "Destiny Of The Daleks," "Remembrance Of The Daleks" or the recent one where they turn people into pigs and then dress in zoot suits, you won't understand what the fuss is about. Watch "Genesis Of The Daleks" or "Dalek." (Before you jump on me in comments, I do like "Remembrance," except the Daleks wobble horribly and look just decrepit.) In their prime, though, the Daleks glide along, rasping with anger and pointing their terrible egg-whisk guns. They're utterly cheap — and horrifying. And you only occasinally Runners up: debatable whether the Cybermen are aliens, but they do often look cool. Also, the Draconians and Zygons make the rubber-mask thing look brilliant, and the Forest of Cheem also doesn't look bad at all. I also like the Slitheen, but only design-wise.

9. The Aliens from The Arrival.

Directed by David "Pitch Black" Twohy, this 1996 alien invasion film was probably made for three Snickers wrappers and a handful of arcade tokens — but I really love the look of these aliens, and they way they move on their weird satyr-ish horse legs. Here's a slinky alien transforming itself into a hawt babe, probably because it just watched Species. Also, I love the flaps that cover up its brain, and how they undulate. Nice stuff!

8. The Visitors from V.

They look human most of the time, but when we get the occasional glimpse of their real lizard faces under their human masks, it's super-effective — as long as we don't linger. Here are a couple of choice moments. I love Diana picking at the shreds of her human disguise, like they're a scab (at about 4:00 in the first video). And the speech in the second video is the greatest thing ever:

7. Greedo and the other cantina aliens, in Star Wars.

Weirdly, later live-action Star Wars movies have never featured aliens that felt as interesting and lively as the first glimpse we got in that cantina scene. Of course, we've already exposited about our love for Greedo, but all of the quick glimpses of aliens in this scene have a liveliness that makes you feel like they're each the star of a cool story. Not bad for an underdog film with a tiny $8.5 million budget (not much even in 1977) whose crew was busy trashing the set and making fun of the Wookiee costume.

6. The Jem'Hadar in Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

They actually jumped out at me when I was compiling pics for the post about silly-looking facial prosthetics last week — there was a picture of a Vorta surrounded by Jem'Hadar troopers, and I had to crop the Jem'Hadar out of the image, because they actually looked kind of cool. Something about the way their prostheses work with their faces really feels realistic, and all of those scenes of them struggling with their addiction to ketracel white feel engaging rather than run-of-the-mill. Runner up: Species 8472 in Voyager had some moments of genuine creepitude as well.

5. Black Oil in The X-Files.

A sentient alien virus that can live in hibernation for thousands of years, it appears as a liquid, not unlike crude oil. But it can move on its own, and it's sentient, and it can take people over. There's nothing cheaper than just having some black goo oozing around, and yet it's completely convincing and compelling, and doesn't feel like any life form you've encountered on Earth.

4. The Aliens in District 9.

Obviously, this movie's still fresh in our minds, but the downtrodden aliens in the film look different than anything we'd already seen. Their twitching face-tentacles can't help grossing you out a bit, even as their big pleading eyes lay claim to your sympathy. With a budget of around $30 million, this film is the equivalent of Star Wars or Alien back in the day — a low-budget film that succeeds thanks to a lot of inventiveness born of desperation. And great storytelling, of course. I almost left this film off the list, because we've covered it so much lately, but it clearly belongs.

3. The Vorlon from Babylon 5.

These energy-based life forms are among the First Ones, and inspire a quasi-religious awe among people who see them. So its fitting that their headgear and robes look so alien and unfamiliar. As Sheridan tells Kosh at one point, he can't even tell if it's the same Vorlon under all that covering, or different Vorlons in the same guise.

2. The 456, on Torchwood.

To me, this is the absolute best way to do an alien species on a budget. Shroud it in toxic smoke — and mystery — and just show little glimpses of evil tentacles. The way these creatures shriek and spatter the walls of their enclosure with alien puke will stick in your mind long after you're done watching the miniseries "Children Of Earth." This official still is actually a better look at the 456 than we ever get in the actual television show — and even in this image, they're somewhat indistinct and obscene looking. They're the perfect mixture of mysterious and disgusting, just right for aliens who want to molest your children.

1. The Xenomorph, from Alien.

The studio originally only wanted to give director Ridley Scott a $4.2 million budget, until he showed them storyboards and Mobius illustrations. But, says Scott in a recent interview, "The [revised] budget started out at $.8.2-million and ended up at 8.6, which I think in those days was still relatively cheap. We didn't have the money to do pretty well anything... But in a funny kind of way, you get very clever when there is very little money, because it makes you think." Scott had a stroke of luck when writer Dan O'Bannon took him aside and showed him H.R. Giger's art "like he was showing me a dirty book," and they brought in Giger to design — and sculpt — the alien costume and other alien artifacts. But the other key, says Scott, was disguising the fact that this was still a man in a suit:

We started with a stunt man who was quite thin, but in the rubber suit he looked like the Michelin Man. So my casting director said, ‘I've seen a guy in a pub in Soho who is about seven feet tall, has a tiny head and a tiny skinny body.' So he brought Bolaji Bodejo to the office, and he was actually from Somalia, funnily enough," Scott remarks, having much later directed BLACK HAWK DOWN, which was set in Somalia. "I said, ‘Do you want to be in movies,' and he said sure. And he became the alien. I had him for two months. In the cockpit, there's a pack of cigarettes that says ‘Bolaji.'

Thanks to Alan Bostick, Alasdair Stuart, Madeline Ashby, @Nightwyrm on Twitter, Marlin May, Andrea Zanin, Melinda Adams, Rina Weisman, Micky Shirley, Susie Kameny, Greta Christina, Serene Vannoy, Rus McLaughlin, Minal Hajratwala, Annelise Ophelian, Seth Kaufman, David Fraser, and James Limbach for suggestions!

The "old soldier who gets dragged out of retirement" story is a great old chestnut. Last week, we were wondering what comes after the "young hero gets called to his/her destiny" story and the "hero tries to reject his/her heroic calling, with disastrous results" story — and the "older hero tries to retire, only to get drafted back into service" story is certainly one of the classics that comes afterwards. It's just that it comes long, long after the "young hero is called for the first time" story.

We won't touch on its close relative, the "getting the old starship crew back together" story, in this post — but we'll deal with it next week. For now, though, here are 20 great heroes who didn't quite manage to give up all the excitement for good:

Widowmaker by Mike Resnick
Who comes out of retirement? Jefferson Nighthawk, the awesome bounty hunter also known as — wait for it — the Widowmaker.
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? Nighthawk was frozen for a century to keep a deadly disease at bay. But now the costs of his care have risen, plus there's a dreaded assassin causing chaos on the frontier, so Nighthawk has to come back out of retirement one last time.

Heretics Of Dune by Frank Herbert
Who comes out of retirement? Miles Teg, military genius and former Supreme Bashar of the Bene Gesserit.
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? Bene Gesserit Mother Superior Taraza seeks out Teg at his family home on the planet Lernaeus, hoping he'll mentor the new Duncan Idaho. And then he gets drawn into a sinkhole of intrigue, torture and super-speed powers.

Doctor Who: Battlefield
Who comes out of retirement? Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, retd.
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? Strange, ominous goings on! Arthurian knights in power armor. England's greatest need! But mostly, the Doctor needs someone to give him his yellow roadster back.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, "All Good Things".
Who comes out of retirement? Jean-Luc Picard
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? He starts having weird timey wimey stuff, involving a crack in space. Everybody thinks it's just a crack in his brain, until they learn better. Sort of.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Who comes out of retirement? Spock
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? He's on the verge of embracing universal logic through the Kohlinar ritual, and becoming some kind of logial monk, when V'Ger calls to him. Also, Kirk sort of comes back from his semi-retirement behind a desk.

Metal Gear Solid: The novelization
Who comes out of retirement? Solid Snake, a former agent of FOXHOUND.
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? Worldwide crisis, man! Genetically engineered agents are stealing warheads, and only another genetically engineered ubermensch can stop them!

The Last Colony by John Scalzi
Who comes out of retirement? John Perry and Joan Sagan.
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? They're needed to lead a new "seed" colony of 2500 people, representing people from 10 existing colony worlds.

Use Of Weapons by Iain M. Banks
Who comes out of retirement? Culture agent Cheradenine Zakalwe.
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? He's had enough of doing the Culture's dirty work, but Diziet Sma needs him to do one last job — and Zakalwe will make them pay handsomely this time around.

Blade Runner
Who comes out of retirement? Former "Blade Runner" Rick Deckard
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? Fellow "Blade Runner" Holden got shot, administering a Voight-Kampff test to a Replicant, so Deckard has to step back in. If he doesn't agree to play along, he'll just be one of the "little people," and we all know what happens to them. And don't ask who the origami unicorn sings for — it probably sings for you.

X-Files: I Want To Believe
Who comes out of retirement? Fox Mulder
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? The FBI promises to call off the manhunt for the elusive Mulder in return for his help in the search of several missing women.

The Affinity Trap by Martin Sketchley
Who comes out of retirement? Alexander Delgado
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? Alexander is asked by Earth's military dictator to escort alien Seriatt named Lycern on a diplomatic mission.

Watchmen
Who comes out of retirement? Nite Owl II
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? After the murder of a former colleague Nite Owl can't help but return to old habits especially with Silk Spectre and Rorschach egging him on.

Chindi by Jack McDevitt
Who comes out of retirement? Hutch
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? In a desperate attempt to find Spacefaring alien life Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchkins accepts one final flight in search of an alien race.

Masters Of Science Fiction, "Awakening"
Who comes out of retirement? Major Albert Skinner (Terry O'Quinn)
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? The X-Files' cigarette smoking man seems to have trouble keeping his alien invasions under control, so he calls on the retired UFO professional to help him out, in this segment based on the story by Howard Fast.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold
Who comes out of retirement? Wildcat
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? Lonely and depressed and sparring with Batman in his boxing gm, he decides to venture out into crime fighting again to see if he's still got it.

Stargate: SG-1
Who comes out of retirement?Col. Jack O'Neill
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? After the Stargate is deciphered, he's recalled to duty because he's the only guy who can handle the situation.

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Who comes out of retirement? Constable Moore
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? Constable Moore gets back into his powered Hoplite armor for the war against the Fists of Righteous Harmony.

Star Wars
Who comes out of retirement? Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? After Luke Skywalker's adoptive parents are killed Obi-Wan decides that it is finally time for Luke to assert his role as a Jedi.

The Fifth Element
Who comes out of retirement? Korben Dallas
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? As a former major in the Federated Army's Special Forces Korben finds himself accidentally entangled in an Apocalyptic race against time.

Escape from New York
Who comes out of retirement? Snake Plissken
Why can't they let an old soldier rest? After robbing the Ferderal Reserve Depositiory, Snake Plissken, a former soldier is one of the U.S.' most infamous criminals. He's called out to rescue the President after he's been taken hostage in the country's largest prison, New York.

This list is really only scratching the surface of a venerable cliche. What classics did we leave out?

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown, who heroically stepped into finish writing up this feature after Comic Con ate our brains. And thanks also to Ashley Edward Miller, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Richard Hartzell, James Limbach, Chris Hsiang, Georgie Thomas and Drax Ireland, plus anyone else I missed.

BEST:

Spot, Data's Orange Tabby Cat from Star Trek: The Next Generation
Who: Data's number 1 friend that didn't wear a Devo-esque visor on his face.
Why he's awesome: He's probably one of the only cats in the universe that has an infinitely advanced AI at his beck and call.
Bonus points: Anything that pisses Riker off is a big plus in my book.

Willis the Bouncer from Robert Heinlein's Red Planet
Who: A sound mimicking furry ball that every kid should have as a friend.
Why he's awesome: In a 1960's era future, when a dog just won't cut it, the only way to really impress the kids at school is with an alien that doubles as a soccer ball. And here's a clip from the Fox miniseries adaptation.

R2D2, Star Wars
Who: The yin to C3PO's (annoying) yang that brings logic and light to any situation through a series of flickering lights and bleeps.
Why he's awesome: He's a moving trashcan that manages to be more likeable than most of the Star Wars palz extended cast.

Porthos, Captain Archer's Beagle from Enterprise
Who: Easily one of the more tolerable characters on Enterprise. Mostly because he didn't talk.
Why he's awesome: He's a beagle! How can beagles not be cute? Also, I feel like after the unfortunate Scotty related transporter incident, he deserves a nice memorial.

Ampersand, Y the Last man
Who: The world's ending, every man is dead, you're an aspiring escape artist pining away for your lost girlfriend and you're all alone. What do you do? Have crazy monkey antics with your favorite jungle friend with a punctuation mark as a name.
Why he's awesome: Not to spoil too much, but he may or may not be humanity's key to getting the XY's back in action.

Lockjaw
Who: Marvel's own alien bulldog and member of the non-human branch of the Avengers.
Why he's awesome: He's super strong, can eat anything and once latched onto the Thing.

Dog the Robot from Half Life 2
Who: Alyx Vance's No.1 go to robotic buddy who helps when your path is blocked by other dimensional beings or just wants to play fetch with your grav gun.
Why he's awesome: He's a giant robot with the personality of a dog. Do you need more?

Pen Pen, from Neon Genesis Evangelion
Who: A genetically altered super smart penguin that lives with Misato Katsuragi during the Angel apocalypse.
Why he's awesome: While the series has moments of intense despair and darkness, you can always count on jerky, anime humor involving naked people and penguins to brighten your day.

K-9 from Doctor Who
Who: Dr Who's multi-generational robotic canine companion.
Why he's awesome: He's gotten a series of spinoff stories and was even parodied on South Park.

Nibbler from Futurama
Who: Nibbler is part of an ancient race of Nibblonians who protect the universe from giant glowing brains that make everyone stupid. Er, Stupid-er.
Why he's awesome: He can eat about 1,000 times his body mass to, uh, produce dark matter.

Gaspode, from Terry Prachett's Discworld series
Who: A talking dog with human intelligence that attempts to bring "Hollywood" to Discworld.
Why he's awesome: He's an endless source of snarky remarks and regularly uses his speech to manipulate humans when he needs food.

CJ-7
Who: A puff ball with a body that guaranteed to produce family friendly fun times.
Why he's awesome: CJ-7 can help you repair torn relationships with certain parental figures and bring people back from the dead.

Einstein, Doc Brown's dog from Back to the Future
Who: You might be under the impression that a certain Family Ties alum might be the Doc's best time traveling friend in this series, but you'd be wrong. This adorable little terrier follows Doc whenever her goes.
Why he's awesome: As long as you ignore the craptacular animated television series, Einstein is always cute, helpful and never obnoxious.

Ein, Cowboy Bebop
Who: A super brained corgie that gets stranded on the Bebop.
Why he's awesome: Although they never really get into it in the series, Ein is a "data dog" that possesses super intelligence that allows him to answer phones and steer cars.

Bubastis, Ozymandias' lynx from Watchmen
Who: When you're a super genius David Bowie impersonator with the world at your fingertips what do you do next? You create a genetically engineered psychedelic colored lynx as a companion.
Why he's awesome: He takes one for the team for the sake of furthering an evil plan for his master.

Gizmo, Gremlins
Who: The main furry faced protagonist of the Gremlins series.
Why he's awesome: While I'm pretty much a fan of all the gremlins, I can't deny the greatness that is Gizmo channeling his inner Rambo.

Seymour from Futurama
Who: Seymour is a part of one of the most tear jerking episodes of Futurama involving Fry recounting the story of the most loyal dog that ever lived.
Why he's awesome: Did you see the last scene? He's the most loyal dog that ever lived! Also, we can rest easy knowing that alternate timeline Fry gave Seymour a great life.

Bronx from Gargoyles
Who: Bronx is the dog version of the Manhattan gargoyle clan. During the whole series you only see one other gargoyle beast, but unlike Budeka, Bronx gets a whole episode devoted to him befriending an Amish kid.
Why he's awesome: Gargoyles are already pretty high on the cool supercreatures scale, but add a dog personality to the mix, and you've got gold.

Roach from WALL-E
Who: They weren't lying when they said that after the world ended there would be nothing left but cockroaches. Fortunately, the end of the world also gave them charming personalities!
Why he's awesome: Making me want a roach as a pet is an epic win in my book.

Kevin and Dug from Up
Who: Kevin is a rare, brilliantly colored giant bird that Carl and Russell accidentally find in Paradise Falls. Dug is sweet golden retriever with a collar that allows him to talk.
Why they're awesome: It takes a lot to make slapstick giant birds funny, but Pixar does a magnificent job. And Dug? He's exactly what I imagine an actual talking dog to sound like. SQUIRREL!

WORST:

Tribbles from Star Trek
Who: Fuzzy, purring little meat pets that take over the original Enterprise.
Why they suck: Pets rocks were bad enough, why would they think that a massively multiplying furry pet rock would be better?

ALF
Who: Alien puppet that takes over a really lame sitcom in the 80's. If ever you want to torture someone without the use of waterboarding, show them and episode of ALF… or Small Wonder.
Why he sucks: Look me straight in the eye and tell me you didn't scream in horror when you saw that clip.

Snarf, Thundercats
Who: A fat alien cat that ends every sentence with an annoying "snarf!" sound.
Why he sucks: Is he a lizard or a cat? I'm going to go with meth induced demonic lovechild.

Teddy from A.I.
Who: An animatronic intelligent Teddy Rucksbin from the future that accompanies David in a search for the Blue Fairy.
Why he sucks: Ok, now I understand that some people might take issue with Teddy's position on the worst list but he's a toy that's alive. That's pretty much the worst nightmare of most 8-year-old kids. And me.

Slimer from Ghostbusters
Who: A green ghost that terrorizes the Ghostbusters team by covering everything in slime.
Why he sucks: For those of us born in the mid 80's and watched the Ghostbusters cartoon first, we expected to see cool ghost antics when we finally saw the movie. Instead, we were greeted with a grotesque blob that was pretty evil.

Div-x from Penny Arcade
Who: You might remember the Sony Dix-X player, an ahead of its time technical marvel.
Why he sucks: According to Penny Arcade Comics, he's a foul-mouthed drunk that's teetering on the edge of killing us all.

Pets from Children of Men
Who: When the world's gone infertile, people turn to animals to provide comfort in the end of humanity.
Why they suck: I have nothing against the animals in Children of Men, personally, but seeing all the dogs, cats and birds cluttering people's homes can be an ominous image.

Selacious Crumb from Star Wars
Who: He's a little fox-lizard thing that hangs out with Jabba the Hut and laughs at all his lame jokes.
Why he sucks: Everybody hates the skinny jerk in the corner with the stupid laugh.

Gleek from Superfriends
Who: The alien monkey pet of the Wondertwins.
Why he sucks: Usually if he was featured in Superfriends, you could count on him popping out to end the episode on a lame joke.

Independence Day Dog from Independence Day
Who: If you're like me then you probably laughed at the idea of a ball of flame chasing a golden retriever down a tunnel.
Why he sucks: Was it really necessary to have a slow motion explosion behind a dog? And wouldn't all that heat ultimately cook them all in that storage locker?
Then Again:...he's immune to explosions. And that's pretty cool. Dodging fire like that, he's like a canine Neo. Maybe he should have been best?

Space Buddies
Why they suck: I'll just point you in the direction of this.

Queequeg, X-files
Who: A Pomeranian adopted by Dana Scully and eaten shortly after by the legendary Big Blue.
Why he sucks: He was found snacking on his previous owner.

Krypto
Who: Superman's dog. Enough said.
Why he sucks: I hate pet versions of superheroes. Also, why does he need a cape?

Muffit from the original Battlestar Gallactica
Who: Caprica used to have a variety of tracker dogs but sadly, none of them survived the Cylon attack. Instead a group robotic dogs are created to replace them.
Why he sucks: Is he an ewok? A fuzzy, metallic gremlin on meth? You decide.

MAD Cat from Inspector Gadget
Who: Dr. Claw's chortling fat feline.
Why he sucks: He's the quintessential evil cat meant to taunt the hero. Plus Dr. Claw regularly beat the crap out of him and he seemed to be ok with that.

Frank the Dog from Men in Black
Who: An alien stool pigeon using the guise of a small pug.
Why he sucks: He made me remember "Who Let the Dogs Out" existed.

Gir, Invader Zim
Who: Invader Zim's mentally disturbed robot helper that was given to him as either a joke or sabotage. Probably both.
Why he sucks: Yeah, yeah Gir is really cute, but he's amoral, evil and would gladly watch you die a fiery death while bursting into a fit of giggles.

Astro, The Jetsons
Who: The Scooby Doo knockoff of the 21st century.
Why he sucks: It might have worked with the Scooby Gang, but there's only room for one charismatic dog with a speech impediment ‘round these parts.

Lamar, Half Life 2
Who: The neutered headcrab that resides in Dr. Isaac Kleiner's laboratory.
Why he sucks: Crabs are rarely a good thing. Head crabs are a double whammy of bad.

Joshua from Dark Angel
Who: A transgenic dog-man with an affinity for painting and crappy comedic timing.
Why he sucks: There was only one good thing that came out of season two of Dark Angel and that rhymes with Smensen Shackles.

Honorable Mention: Blarp from the Lost in Space remake.

Moore, creator of Battlestar Galactica, didn't seem to mind our obnoxious question. Here's what he said:

Well, it's a different concept. The holodeck is a space, and you would go into [it] and 3D forms were created in front of you... This is truly a virtual world, much more akin to a virtual headset. Whereas you have an experiential ability touch things [you're not going into an actual space], so it's a different sort of mechanics. At the story level, we're not explaining the idea that if you die in the virtual space, you die in the real space. [Instead, if you die in the virtual space, you just wake up.]

It's more like gaming is now. You game, you don't get killed, you wake up. We're using it much more psychologically now. The experiences that the astronauts have aboard the spaceship in the virtual space are things that are psychologically motivated. They go in there in and do things for entertainment. [And this reveals something about their personalities, and where they want to spend their time.] When things go wrong in that space, how is it going to affect them in the real world? How does the virtual space affect the real world storyline, and vice versa?

He did admit, in response to another caller, that Virtuality's virtual headsets are pretty similar to the ones you'll see in the BSG prequel Caprica. The main difference is that in Virtuality, there's less of a shared virtual world, and it's not an infinite space with tons of orgy rooms and different environments. Rather, each crewmember has a private virtual reality module, which can be shared but is pretty limited. The show conveys the virtual nature of these environments by filming all the VR scenes in greenscreen, instead of a real setting.

And Moore promises that Virtuality is less serious than the post-apocalyptic BSG. "There's more humor probably in the first 10 minutes of Virtuality than there was in the whole run of Battlestar," he says.

Virtuality is much more about the tensions and manipulations and cross-tensions among a group of people "in a metal tube going in a straight line for a decade or so." In addition to serving in this deep-space exploration mission, they're also taking part in a reality TV show for the viewers at home. And the crew was chosen as much for their diversity and mix of characters — for this reality show — as for their skills, which gives rise to questions over whether the best people for the mission were chosen. Another source of tension: when the crew hears news from Earth (including news of major ecological disasters) they don't know if it's true, or if they're just being fed horrendous news to make the reality TV show better viewing.

These three elements: deep space exploration, VR, and reality TV are "tough to juggle," Moore admits. "It's a very ambitious piece. That was the reaction on the part of Fox when they saw it: It's a very complicated piece with a lot of moving parts." Fox felt the two-hour pilot would have been a great feature film, but weren't sure if it could launch a TV series. But Moore still holds out hope that it could be picked up as a series if the response to the June 26 airing is positive enough. It's also possible the story could be continued as a comic book or as another TV movie.

Also, keep your eyes peeled in the next few days for some special web-only content created for Virtuality:

There is a series of webisodes were created for Virtuailty... The webisodes were episodes of the reality show. You would see pieces of the reality show as it's broadcast back to Earth. That was part of the pitch [to the network. If the show had been picked up, you would have been able to watch installments of Edge of Never, the reality series, on the website.] The concept and plan would have been that you can log in on to the website and there would be information included that would not be accessible to people watching the show. If you wanted to know everything that is going on. The astronauts may not be aware of how the show is being viewed back on Earth, they may not understand how things are. My understanding is right now fox is going to put them up on the Facebook page for Edge of Never In the next few days you'll be able to download or view these webisodes.

The Los Angeles Times caught up this weekend with Phillip Paley, who played the caveboy Cha-Ka in all 43 episodes of the 1974-76 series. Paley earned the role thanks to a childhood spent learning gymnastics and karate; he studied under Chuck Norris and was a black belt by age nine. Today, he's 45 and working at a law firm in Santa Monica, and he tells the Times that, while he no longer has his Cha-Ka costume, he still has the dictionary of the Paku language created for the show that Cha-Ka and his people spoke. Years before Klingon appeared as a full-fledged language of its own in the 1980s in the Star Trek films and on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Land of the Lost hired a UCLA linguist to invent a complete language for Paley and his fellow Pakuni.

Series co-creator Marty Krofft, speaking to British magazine SFX in 1997, said the initial impulse to create an artificial language for the show came from the network, which, hoping to appease the FCC, wanted to ensure that the kids' show had a positive educational component. Sid and Marty Krofft hired linguist Victoria Fromkin to create the language.

In the same issue of SFX, Fromkin said that she developed the language to be revealed over time in the series, so that kids watching could learn new words every week the same way Will and Holly did in their attempts to understand Cha-Ka, by picking up the Paku vocabulary and grammar in context as Cha-Ka used them. (Unfortunately, Fromkin said, the episodes would frequently air out of sequence in reruns, spoiling her lesson plan.) "Since I did a lot of work on West African languages, particularly Akan, the major language of Ghana, Paku appears to be in the Kwa family of Bantu languages," she said. "Or at least if some linguist 2000 years from now would find excerpts of it, through reconstruction methods they would probably conclude that."

Not only was Paku the first artificial language created for a kid's show (according to Stephen Corley and Tim Cain's Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages), but it was also the first instance of a television show hiring a professional linguist to develop such a language. Fromkin went on to invent the far less extensive vampire language spoken in the 1998 film Blade.

Fromkin created a 200-word vocabulary for the Pakuni. A good chunk of which survives in this Pakuni-English dictionary reconstructed by LOTL fan Nels Olsen. So if you're watching the reruns again on SyFy, you can consult the list and learn not to confuse an aganka (iguana) with an agamba (dinosaur).

As the Cyberpunk Project writes in an essay called "Neuromancer Afterlife":

"I am the dead, and their land."

With life redefined, so comes a new afterlife. New gods, new demons, new inhabitants. And many different levels, reincarnations. The body can be remade, copied, clones carry on the family line. Cold sleep, cryogenics extending presence, slow wasting. Cons tructs, down loads of the soul, ghosts. Digital purgatory, brain death.

"For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons. Only now are such things possible."

Omnicient, omnipotent, omnipresent. Demons or gods, they possess power. They are worshipped and feared. The AIs. Religion has advanced with technology, heaven and hell can be interfaced with, the powers addressed. Science has brought back that which was previously done without. Some hint o f symbiosis, of the immortal hive. Others fear them like the lords of Hell. To themselves, they just are. They exist, they reside. They are the infinity of angels on the head of a pin, the threads of the matrix. They, It, is All.

"To live here is to live. There is no difference."

Memories are virtual, we relive them without physically manifesting. Perhaps the mind can be reproduced, decanted into a simulated environment. Perhaps what we ta ke for granted every day is such an experience. It is the age old question of who we are. How do we define ourselves? Bits, bytes? By the flow of information, by wiring, by memory, data? In the Virtual age, what do we become? And were do we go? Is this salvation?

Several people in Neuromancer by William Gibson. Super-hacker Case meets his girlfriend Linda Lee, who was murdered in Chiba City, but her consciousness lives on in the cyber-matrix. And then he and his friends have to steal a ROM containing the personality and memories of McCoy Pauley, aka The Dixie Flatline. And at the end of the book, mocking inhuman laughter suggests that Pauley may have been reanimated permanently in cyberspace, thanks to the help of Neuromancer/Wintermute. As one book puts it, he gets an unsettling vision of his life continuing in cyberspace after his body dies.

Reno in Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams. This uber-hacker dies in the "real" world, but his consciousness lives on in cyberspace, and even manages to ambush the bad guys electronically at the end of the novel.

Pulse (movie). A haxx0r named Josh steals and distributes (why?) a computer virus that opens a portal to the world of the dead. And then he commits suicide, but he keeps popping up on the computer, sending people messages and videos and mortgage-refi spam. (It was 2006.) And later in the movie, you can see spooky dead children trapped inside the computer, and the implication is that the computer is trapping their dead spirits. The only way to escape is to get out of cellphone coverage, because the cellphones have it too. Veronica Mars, why don't you just use your awesome sleuthing skills to solve this one?

River Song and friends in Doctor Who, "Forest Of The Dead". River Song does the time-honored thing of knocking the Doctor out so she can take his place in the brain-frying machine and get cooked to a sizzle. But luckily, FutureDoctor has left a handy escape clause that PresentDoctor can use to bring her back from the dead: her fancy sonic screwdriver retains a copy of her consciousness, and he's able to upload her into the planet-sized library's computer system, where she's stuck taking care of a couple of snot-nosed virtual kids forever. Way better than being dead, right? Right?

Eva Friedel in Memories: Magnetic Rose. This famous opera singer retires to a space station, but when she dies, she leaves behind an A.I. imprint of her personality. Unfortunately, it's damaged and incomplete.

The Mailman and Ery in "True Names" by Vernor Vinge. The Mailman backs up his brain into the system, but his consciousness runs so slow, he only manages to experience fifteen or twenty hours of human awareness in the several years he's running online. Ery plans to do the same thing, only better:

She was grinning now, an open though conspiratorial grin that was very familiar. "When Bertrand Russell was very old, and probably as dotty as I am now, he talked of spreading his interests and attention out to the greater world and away from his own body, so that when that body died he would scarcely notice it, his whole consciousness would be so diluted through the outside world.

"For him, it was wishful thinking, of course. But not for me. My kernel is out there in the System Every time I'm there I transfer a little more of myself The kernel is growing into a true Erythrina, who is also truly me. When this body dies," she squeezed his hand with hers, "when this body dies, I will still be, and you can still talk to me."

The story's hero, Mr. Slippery, thinks about stopping her, but realizes this is an inevitable end-point of human evolution.

Dr. Londes and his cult in Cowboy Bebop, "Brain Scratch." The imaginary Dr. Londes starts a cult that believes in achieving immortality by digitizing your brain and zapping it up to the network. But it turns out Dr. Londes doesn't exist at all, he's just a construct.

Alex McCandless in Freejack. In this movie, which is almost more awesomeness than two hours can contain, Emilio Estevez is a racecar driver who is about to die in a spectacular crash, but his body is whisked forward in time to the dystopian future of 2009. He's held prisoner by Mick Jagger, and it turns out that Anthony Hopkins wants his body. Because Hopkins died in an accident while on a business trip, and his mind is preserved in cyberspace, where he and Estevez face off in a virtual world. Can Estevez keep Hopkins from downloading himself into his body?

Moloch in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "I, Robot... You, Jane." Somehow scanning a demonic spellbook causes the trapped demon to get scanned into the interweb, and it starts having steamy chats with Willow. Ah, cyberlove.

Kenshiro "Zero" Cochrane in Ghost Rider 2099. Zero is a hacker in the futuristic world of Marvel's 2099 universe. He gets hit with a poisoned flechette in Transverse City, but as his body dies, he jacks his consciousness up to the cyberverse. A group of A.I.s living in Cyberspace — in an area known as the Ghostworks — retrieve Zero's concsiousness and download it into a fancy new robot body, to become Ghost Rider 2099, the cyber-spirit of cyber-vengeance. It's cyber!

Almost everyone in "Sweats" by Keith Brooke, in the anthology We Think Therefore We Are. In this story, everybody (or at least everybody rich) gets to go to a virtual afterlife after dying, which also allows a murder victim to prosecute (and persecute) his murderer after death. Even up to the point of stealing his murderer's body and downloading himself into it.

David and Invisigoth in The X-Files, "Kill Switch." A hacker named David develops a way to upload his brain to the net in this episode written by Gibson. And that turns out to come in handy, since later on David's dead body is found, with a cyber-helmet attached to his head. The A.I. that used to be David takes Mulder prisoner because he wants a copy of a killer virus called "Kill Switch" that Mulder has. In the end, both David and his girlfriend, Esther aka Invisigoth, manage to escape into the internet together. In another Chris Carter creation, the short-lived TV series Harsh Realm, Thomas Hobbes is declared dead after his brain is uploaded to a virtual apocalpytic war scenario called "Harsh Realm."

Magi in Neon Genesis Evangelion. The supercomputer "Magi" is created from the mind of Ristsuko Akagi's dead mother. It has "the mother, the scientist and the woman" balancing out its brain. Also, two of the "Evas" are made from the souls of two characters' dead moms.

Graves in Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Schizoid Man." This pompous scientist is dying, but he has a plan to transfer his brain into a computer network. Instead, though, he downloads his consciousness into the android Data, whereupon he starts reciting crappy poetry about himself, feuding with Picard and whistling showtunes from Wizard Of Oz. Some people just don't deserve cyber-immortality.

Juliana Soong in Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Inheritance." Juliana Soong dies, but her husband Noonien saves her by transferring her into an android body so realistic, she can't even tell she's not the original Juliana. And later on, Noonien achieves a kind of immortality after his own death, by leaving a subroutine in Data's brain that makes Data dream of him.

Roushana Maitland in Song Of Time by Ian R. MacLeod. The protagonist of this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel is a concert violinist who's about to pass into a "virtual afterlife," when she discovers a half-drowned man on the Cornish coast.

Lawnmower Man (the movie). Jobe, the idiot turned cyber-savant, kicks Pierce Brosnan's ass — but then he gets caught in an explosion that destroys the building his body is in. Good thing Joby's found a "backdoor" to the mainframe his consciousness was trapped in. Now cyberspace is his oyster. His salty, slimy, cyber oyster. Full of slimy, salty bad cybersex.

Everyone, in Silicon Karma by Thomas A. Eaton. Someone invents a viable mindscanning technology, which means that everyone goes to cyberspace after he/she dies. And of course, naughty people learn how to hack the afterlife and mess up everyone's experience of Heaven.

Nono in FAQ:Frequently Asked Questions. The hero of this indie film runs away from a totalitarian government, and then at the end of the movie, he sees his dead girlfriend, Angelique, reincarnated inside an erotic broadcast online. He somehow leaves his body behind and goes inside the erotic internet to be with her. (Or does he? It's an art film, so who knows what actually happens?)

Jonathan Wilde, in The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod. Any novel that starts with the line, "He woke, and remembered dying" automatically earns inclusion on this list. In Stone Canal, the anarchist leader Jonathan Wilde lived on Earth 600 years ago, but a group of radicals retrieve his consciousness from online, and put him into a new body. The only trouble is, this new Wilde isn't quite the same person as the original.

A few people in Ghost In The Shell: S.A.C. This anime series features a few people who die but have their consciousnesses saved in virtual networks. For example, in Ghost In The Shell: SAC: Solid State Society, Koshiki gets permission to work from home via a cybernetic body. And then he dies due to illness, but it's two years before anyone notices, because his cybernetic body keeps going under his control, and his consciousness appears to be preserved.

Hellraiser: Hellworld. This direct-to-DVD sequel revolves around an evil MMO called Hellworld (at hellworld.com.) One of the players, Adam, commits suicide, and Pinhead tells Adam's father, "Your son was quite the prodigy. He opened the gateway to Hell. But you never believed yourself, did you?" The other teens who play Hellworld are invited to a special Hellworld party at a spooky mansion, with sex and drugs and blood and guts. Reality blurs together with the MMO world, and the hapless teens realize they're partying... in cyberhell. Or something.

Frankie in "Xanadu" by Thomas M. Disch. Frankie dies and finds his consciousness uploaded to a virtual world. It's all sunshine and puppies at first, until the company that runs this afterlife falls on hard times and needs to raise some more capital. Suddenly, all of the people in cyber-Heaven have to work for a living again — and due to a clerical error, his consciousness is downloaded into a woman's body and he has to work as a prostitute. Probably not the eternal reward he had in mind.

Caprica (TV Series). Long before the Cylons had a plan — or a sexy red dress for that matter — a monotheistic cult-member blows up a monorail in Caprica, killing everyone on board including Zoe Graystone, daughter of computer genius Daniel Graystone. Luckily, she's a computer genius too, and she's already uploaded her consciousness to the 'net, creating a cyber-avatar called Zoe-A that lives on in the virtual orgyspace. (Becuase, of course, the human brain only takes up 300 megabytes of storage space.)

Mr. Hormel in "New Hope For The Dead" by David Langford. In a similar vein, Mr. Hormel is a fully paid-up resident of the digital afterlife, with a trust fund in place to guarantee his eternal rest. Unfortunately, the global economy takes a nosedive, and he's faced with three choices: going into storage as a .zip file until the economy improves, having his clock/processor speed slowed down so that a century passes in a few weeks for him, or working for a living. And the third choice isn't even as fun as it sounds. (You can read the whole thing here.)

Everyone in The Accord by Keith Brooke. The Accord is a virtual realm, where you can upload your consciousness, so it'll live on after you die. (As someone in the novel says, "If you want to enter Heaven, first you must be saved." Ha ha.) Noah has an affair with Priscilla inside the Accord, but her husband finds out and murders her. Noah kills himself so he can be with her in the Accord — but there's a catch. The version of you in the Accord isn't who you were at the moment of death, but who you were the last time you uploaded. The Priscilla who lives on inside the Accord is younger and doesn't remember loving Noah at all. This novel takes place in the same universe as "Sweats," mentioned above.

Vance in Batman Beyond, "Lost Soul." Vance died many years ago, when he was an old man. But his consciousness was digitized and became an A.I. After his son dies of a heart attack, his grandson Bobby reactivates him, so he can help run the family business. But instead, Vance tricks Bobby into putting him online, so he can take over all of Gotham City's computers. And then he takes over the cybernetic Batsuit! Oh noes!

The alien entity in Stargate: SG1, "Entity". This disembodied consciousness, which apparently was originally a living being, travels through a wormhole and downloads itself into the mainframe. Eventually it escapes and downloads itself into Sam Carter's body.

Eiri Masami in Serial Experiments Lain. (Thanks to SumatiAmphimonous for suggesting this one.) The project director of Protocol 7 is in charge of advancing the Wired, the sum total of human computing power, but he also aims to copy his brain into the Wired so he can live forever. A few days after he succeds in doing this, he dies in the "real" world. He aims to convince Lain, a 14 year old girl, to follow in his footsteps.

Paul Durham and others, in Permutation City by Greg Egan. (Thanks to WRyan for suggesting this one.) In the future of 2045, rich people are backing up their brainwaves into complete duplicates, known as Copies, and the Copies have started agitating for full personhood and civil rights. Along comes huckster Paul Durham, who proposes to create a virtual-reality city for the wealthy to live in. Durham disembowels himself in the bathtub, but thousands of years later he's still bopping around Permutation City.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown. Thanks also to Zack Stentz, Rus McLaughlin, Jack Random, Tim Chevalier and @NoMentionOfKev, @anewthought, @Lazybastid and @cartoonmoney on Twitter.

Nowhere Man, "A Rough Whimper Of Insanity":

This short-lived 1990s show starred Bruce "Captain Pike" Greenwood as a guy who discovers the U.S. Army is being naughty, and suddenly he gets erased from existence. Even his wife no longer knows him. In one episode, "A Rough Whimper Of Insanity," he meets a hacker who can help him discover the truth. (And the episode's title is an anagram of "Information Superhighway." Clever, eh?) First the nice hacker takes Bruce into the virtual world, where he can meet a VR reconstruction of his long-lost wife. He feels the wind on his face and dances with his sweetheart, and it all feels so real... until she fades away. And then later, the duo goes inside the computer architecture and searches for the secret files on what happened to Captain Pike... except that the world starts shaking and falling apart, like an earthquake. It's the bad guys deleting the system! Oh noes!

VR Troopers, "Defending Dark Heart":

The VR Troopers was a sister show to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, about a group of power rangers who fight evil — in the virtual world! In this episode, they get caught in a deadly trap inside virtual reality, which seems to consist of some spikes coming out of the wall. I especially love the way the evil corporate guy clutches a crystal ball to transform himself into his long-haired, evil wrestler persona and return to VR:

Cleopatra 2525, "Reality Check":

Total awesomeness! Cleopatra wakes up and she's back in the year 2001, with her old boyfriend. He tries to convince her that her futuristic life in the year 2525 never really happened, but it turns out she's actually trapped in a virtual reality simulation, and none of it is real! OMG! You can watch the whole episode here, if you're in the correct country:

Transformers Armada, "The Chase":

A bunch of characters you've never heard of, including one named The Rad, get trapped in cyberspace and attacked by Sideways and a guy that looks like Unicron (but isn't, I think). I love that they're biking through cyberspace. Bikes are a common feature in the cyber-world, as you'll discover below. At first, it's just a wacky grid thingy, but then there are planets and moons and weird swirlies and crazy shapes. D00d!

Stargate SG-1, "The Gamekeeper":

Oh wow. This episode has everything. The entire population of a world being kept inside pods and living in virtual reality full time, like in The Matrix? Check. Our heroes get sucked into the VR world too? Check. They're forced to relive their traumatic memories? Check check check, including a trip back to the barbaric era of 1982. And then they escape from the virtual world — only to realize they're still in the VR simulation after all? Check! And finally, the planet's inhabitants don't realize their world is safe to inhabit again, believing it's still ruined by the aftermath of some cataclysm. It's STUFFED WITH GOODNESS!

Doctor Who: Trial Of A Time Lord, "The Ultimate Foe":

We already praised the seminal 1976 story "The Deadly Assassin," where the Doctor travels inside the virtual world of the Matrix for the first time. But Oh. My. Guardians. This 1986 followup is putrid. The Colin Baker version of the Doctor ventures into the Matrix once again, only to find himself in a crappy Dickens Fair adorned with a fugly neon sign, where the evil Valeyard is trying to humiliate him with waiting rooms. And stuff. It's all so the Valeyard can use a "megabyte modem" inside the virtual world to, uh... mess shit up. To be fair, this whole script was written in a weekend after the original writer died, and the replacement writer quit.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Back To The Sewer, "Something Wicked":

The Foot (I think those are the evil ninjas, or else it's some kind of fetish thing) has captured Master Splinter, the Ninja Turtles' teacher, and trapped him in cyberspace. Which is basically like a rotating shiny box in a blue space. Ooh, scary. The Turtles have to venture into the virtual world to rescue Master Splinter before he's, uh, defragmented or something. Did you ever want to see the Turtles act out Tron, complete with glowy blue outfits and lightcycles? Well then, here ya go:

The Adventures Of Lois And Clark, "Virtually Destroyed":

Lex Luthor's illegitimate son is a computer genius, who traps Clark in a virtual world, where his superpowers don't work, and then beats the shit out of him, in an episode written by star Dean Cain himself. And for some reason, being trapped in the virtual world means that Lois and Clark have to share their deepest secrets about their sex lives with each other. Just becuase. Check out this awesome clip from Entertainment Tonight promoting the episode:

Are You Afraid Of The Dark?, "The Tale Of The Renegade Virus":

This may actually be the greatest thing ever. A computer virus becomes sentient and starts stalking a kid with really really bad 1990s hair, to punish him for his evil NKOTB-worshipping ways. The virus not only embeds weird blue gems in the kid's palm, he also rides a little kiddie bicycle (more bikes!) and says things like: "Rule number one: I win, you lose!" And "Going up?" I feel like we don't see enough computer viruses riding teeny bicycles.

Star Trek, "A Fistful Of Datas"

There are so many terrible Trek holo-romps that we could be here all day listing them. (And maybe we'll do that later in the week.) But this is the absolute worst: If I ever go on a killing rampage and slaughter an entire shopping mall full of people with a giant flamethrower, I'm going to blame this episode, and I'll probably be acquitted. Worf and his annoying son Alexander are using the holodeck, playing out some kind of cheesy cowboy fantasy, when Data gets jealous of the holodeck's amazing safety record and decides to prove that he's the most buggy appliance on the Enterprise-D. The result? A whole bunch of cowboy Datas, just inciting me to stage a mall massacre. I love how this Youtube clip has user ratings disabled, for obvious reasons:

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

Newsweek has Leonard Mlodinow - writer of one TNG episode (Season 2's "The Dauphin") and story editor for another 8 - reminisce about his time with Trek, and it's as full of dysfunctional creative types as you'd expect:

In Hollywood, as in life, the real power rests with the moneymen: the studio, or whoever is financing the enterprise (small "e"), and the network, or whoever is putting it on the screen. That's why one writer-producer I worked with on "Star Trek" always carried a wad of thousands of dollars in his pocket, which he fondled when things got frustrating. "To remind me of why I'm here," he said. That producer, who'd been hired during the first season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," told me that writers were fired at such a swift pace that year that at one point the studio almost closed down the show because it couldn't find new ones fast enough. Another writer-producer with waning influence kept getting "demoted" into smaller offices, until he finally just worked at home. Then one day, without telling him, the producers fired his secretary.

Even Gene Rodenberry doesn't escape the gossip:

We saw Gene only occasionally. We were told that when we did see him, we had to take whatever advice he gave us, whatever we thought of it. Gene liked to speak in great detail about life in the 24th century, the era in which our series took place. He spoke with more certainty about the future than I had about the present, a certainty that I suppose comes from knowing that all over the world attorneys and models and kids like I used to be have studied your every word.

Ultimately, though, Mlodinow seems happy to have spent his time working on the show, and be connected with the whole mythology... if only because of what he sees the true success of Star Trek to be:

Gene Roddenberry's real creation is a franchise culture dedicated, like his fictional characters, to "boldly go where no man has gone before." That makes "Star Trek" more enduring than any set of characters or episodes Gene himself created, and bigger than any one of its products or the people who pass through it.

Vulcans Never, Ever Smile [Newsweek]

Yes, the evil aliens in Decoys (and Decoys 2) mate by sticking their tentacles down a human male's throat and then impregnating him with their eggs. And for some reason they have to use their shapeshifting and telepathy to turn themselves into the guy's ultimate fantasy first - so he'll be really, really excited. And the mating must take place at sub-zero temperatures. Got it? Good.

The most awkward scenes of alien mating run the gamut from cheesy space-opera mating to full-on I-can't-believe-they-went-there porn. And yes, some of the clips below are not work-safe, so exercise discretion.

Star Trek: The Next Generation:

Trek, in all its various incarnations, has always been full of unfortunate alien mating moments. But for my money, this is the worst - it's actually the scene that inspired me to track down all the rest of these clips. Riker, blessed with the power of Q, decides to give Worf a Klingon girlfriend... who crawls around the Enterprise bridge in a Klingon aerobics instructor outfit. "Is this your idea of sex?" Geordi asks, awestruck. "This... is... sex!" Worf howls. Ummm. yeah.

Breeders:

Oh dear. An alien has been capturing women and attemting to mate with them. Here they are, in the alien's mental thrall, coating their naked bodies with its extraterrestrial sperm. And yes, it's NSFW:

Futurama:

Poor Dr. Zoidberg. His "erotic display" just doesn't turn out that well.

Weird Science:

In one episode of the short-lived TV series, their friend Chet starts dating an alien woman. Unfortunately, she wants to devour him after sex. Luckily, his ex-girlfriend intervenes just in time.

Babylon 5:

A similar mating practice crops up in this scene from B5's pilot. Commander Sinclair, he's a life-saver.

Space Thing:

An alien in human form, Col. Granilla, comes aboard a human spaceship commanded by women. It's up to this nice Kansas girl to teach him the ways of human mating. Clip is NSFW:

Something Is Out There:

Hand sex! Maryam D'Abo comes from an alien race who keep their erogenous zones in their hands. Here she is, getting it on with her boyfriend before their ship suffers a prison break. Clip is very work-safe, unless hand-sex offends you.

Quark:

This Star Trek spoof featured an episode where Ficus, the unemotional plant man (who's the counterpart of Mr. Spock) has to seduce Princess Libido, who's fallen in love with him. His objective is to use his sexual wiles to convince Libido to help him and his crewmates escape from her evil father. There's just one problem: Ficus doesn't have sex like normal people. He reproduces by pollinating. He's only too happy to show Libido how.

Species 2:

Eve, a clone of Sil, gets so excited she squishes a baseball. It's all because an astronaut, Patrick, has brought something alien back to Earth with him, and it manifests itself while he has sex with a debutante, and then her sister. The debutante suddenly gets very, very pregnant, while the sister notices that Patrick is growing rather a lot of tentacles during sex. Later, Patrick and Eve get together, and Eve's nipples grow tentacles, which I've never seen before. Clips are very, very NSFW:

Society:

Walking in on your parents having sex is bad enough — but what if you've learned your parents are aliens, who have sex by melting their flesh and blending together into weird and monstrous forms? And your sister is also an alien, and her head comes out of your mother's crotch? And asks you if you have any Oedipal fantasies? You might be put off sex for quite some time. This clip may actually be work safe, hard to say.

Inseminoid:

A human gets tied up and subjected to mating with an alien whose penis is a giant bong. This NSFW clip already featured as a "found footage," but I had to include it for completeness. Warning: very NSFW!

The Outer Limits:

Commenter Roklimber suggested this bizarre NSFW scene from a 1995 episode. Alyssa Milano is a nice college girl, until she gets hit with a spore from outer space. And then she suddenly wants to have sex with lots of guys... by absorbing them into herself.

Evil Aliens:

Nerdy Gavin finally gets to have sex with an alien woman, but finds out it's not all it's cracked up to be. And meanwhile, a woman named Foxy gets implanted with an alien fetus. And yes, it's NSFW.

Additional reporting by Alasdair Wilkins.

Spock (Star Trek)
Let's start with the really obvious here. Spock's father is a Vulcan ambassador named Sarek and his mother a human named Amanda Grayson. Much of his character, therefore, is based in the contrast between his two halves, with Leonard Nimoy having said that Spock is ""struggling to maintain a Vulcan attitude, a Vulcan philosophical posture and a Vulcan logic, opposing what was fighting him internally, which was human emotion."

Jack of Hearts (Marvel Comics)
The Jack of Hearts was born Jack Hart, the son of Philip Hart, a human scientist, and Marie, a humanoid extraterrestrial of the Contraxian race. His powers, which include such things as flight and the ability to project heat and concussive force, don't come from his parents, but rather his exposure to "zero fluid," a discovery of his father's.

B'Elanna Torres (Star Trek: Voyager)
B'Elanna, chief engineer aboard the USS Voyager, had a human father and Klingon mother, but her father left for Earth when she was a child, leaving B'Elanna to be raised by her mother. Either due to her childhood or her parentage, B'Elanna was short-tempered and often aggressive, but Roxann Dawson (the actress who portrayed B'Elanna) has said that over the course of the series, the character grows from an "unruly teenager" into a woman.

Moonshadow (Moonshadow)
The titular character in this twelve-issue comic book series written by J. M. DeMatteis is an adolescent boy of human-alien parentage. His mother is a human woman from Brooklyn named Sheila Fay Bernbaum, who takes on the name "Sunflower" during her flower-child days. When she's transported to the alien "zoo," she marries one of her abductors, a member of a nigh omnipotent race called the G'l-Doses. They're essentially glowing orbs of indeterminate largeness who use their power to wreak havoc on the universe, causing war and peace, death and life, with no real modus operandi beyond the delight they derive from the randomness of their actions.

Rystáll Sant (Star Wars)
A dancer for the Max Rebo Band, Rystáll has a Theelin father and human mother from New Bornalex. (It's argued, actually, that due to their greatly varied physical characteristics, that most Theelin are hybrids of one kind or another.)

Deanna Troi (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Troi is the counselor aboard the USS Enterprise, with a Betazoid mother and human father.

Jason (Superman Returns)
When Lois's son shows up, we're supposed to assume the father is Richard White, her fiancé (and Perry White's nephew). But then Jason starts showing signs of super-strength and Kyptonite sensitivity, thereby implying that (sorry, Richard) Jason is actually Superman's kid. (The current convention that Superman cannot conceive a child with Lois clearly does not apply here.) So, yes. Superman: deadbeat alien father.

Reverend Golightly and the kitten children of Thomas Kincade Brannigan and Valerie (Doctor Who, new series)
In "The Unicorn and the Wasp" (Episode 7, Series 4), the Reverend Golightly is revealed not only to be Lady Eddison's son, but also the product of an affair she had with a Vespiform, a giant wasplike alien. Awkward.

"Gridlock" (Episode 3, Series 3) sees the introduction of a delightful little nuclear family, made up of Thomas Kincade Brannigan, a cat man, his human wife, Valerie, and their children: a litter of kittens. (It's debatable whether Brannigan counts as an actual alien, as he probably counts more as just a highly evolved feline lifeform. It's also debatable whether Brannigan is named after Thomas Kinkade, the "painter of light." Let's hope not.)

Additionally, in the 1996 TV movie, the Doctor himself claims to be "half-human, on my mother's side." But generally speaking, nobody listens to anything the Doctor Who TV movie said.

Hera Agathon (Battlestar Galactica)
Hera is the first known half-Cylon, half-human child. Her father is Karl "Helo" Agathon and her mother Sharon "Athena" Agathon.

Countdown - plotted by the movie's Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, and scripted by Tim Jones and Mike Johnson from Orci and Kurtzman's production company - doesn't just set up next month's JJ Abrams-led reboot in style (complete with great art by David Messina); it also offers what may be the final canonical Next Generation story, as well, and it's one that satisfies even without knowing that a movie was coming out to follow it.

The series is really an introduction to Nero, the Romulan who'll rewrite history in the movie. What Countdown gives us is the reason why he does that, as well as make you feel some sympathy and empathy for how he ended up the way we'll see him in theaters a month from now. It's not a small-scale origin, however; it takes the destruction of the planet Romulus - and the death of his wife and unborn son - to turn the good-willed miner into the tattooed villain we've seen in trailers and posters, and it's a destruction that may have been averted had things not been the way they were... leading to his desire to change the universe in grander - and, in a way, much smaller - ways than saving his planet.

His ally in trying to save the planet is Spock, at this point the Federation's ambassador to Romulus and - in a nice allusion to Superman's origin - a scientist who warns of the planet's destruction ahead of time, only to be ignored by the powers that be. When Spock and Nero try to take matters into their own hands to save the planet, they run into the Enterprise (now being commanded by Captain Data), as well as Jean-Luc Picard and Geordi La Forge, both living surprising new lives outside of ongoing starship missions. When Romulus is destroyed, midway through the story, we get to see Nero's transformation into the movie's big bad, as well as the way that brings him into conflict with another familar face, Worf, now fully a Klingon warrior.

Ignoring the movie tie-in altogether, this would still be an enjoyable series; the story feels appropriately epic, with characterization that's spot-on to the Enterprise crew(s) that we know and love and shout-outs to Trek past that aren't self-important or pull you out of the plot (The Romulans have retro-fitted Borg technology to create their ultimate battleship, for example). Even the ending, which very clearly sets up the movie, could be taken at face value as a conclusion complete in and of itself (Spock and Nero's ship disappear into a singularity and are presumed dead by the Enterprise crew who watched it happen). The series doesn't just make you want to see the Star Trek movie, it also makes you want to read more Star Trek comics if they'll be as good as this one.

Star Trek: Countdown's collection edition is released this Wednesday, and the individual issues are available in comic stores and at iTunes right now.

A pervasive urban legend says that Star Trek: TNG wrongly believed that Sherlock Holmes was already in the public domain when the show made its second-season episode, "Elementary, My Dear Data." And then, once Paramount/Viacom realized its mistake, the story goes, the show reached a settlement with the Conan Doyle estate and paid handsomely to reuse Holmes villain Professor Moriarty in a followup episode. This urban legend is all over the net, and we helped to perpetuate it last week with our post about plagiarism in science fiction.

But according to Jon Lellenberg, an attorney who's served as the U.S. agent for the Conan Doyle estate, it's not true at all. In fact, Paramount had worked with the Conan Doyle estate on the Stephen Spielberg-produced movie Young Sherlock Holmes. So Paramount's rights department was already well aware that Holmes was not in the public domain, and they contacted the Conan Doyle estate in advance, seeking permission to dress Data as Holmes and feature Moriarty. The Conan Doyle estate was happy to agree, in exchange for a handsome payment.

So when does Sherlock Holmes actually become public domain? Not until 2023, says Lellenberg.

Family Guy's TNG episode airs Sunday March 29th on FOX.