Since the mid-2000s, Mishka NYC has been at the vanguard of popular streetwear. A cornerstone of their success has been designing clothing influenced by gonzo horror, Z-grade sci-fi, and the overall dank and stanky underbelly of pop culture. Indeed, their gear is worn with equal aplomb by metalheads and hip-hoppers (Lil Jon and Lady Sovereign have sported Mishka in music videos), and the label's past collaborators have ranged from everyone from Iron Maiden album artist Derek Riggs to erotic photographer Ellen Stagg to electro-reggae supergroup Major Lazer.

Label heads Mikhail "Mike" Bortnik and Greg Rivera were nice enough to sit down with io9 and answer some questions about Mishka's design philosophy, winter line, and how Stan Lee cold lamps it at Comic-Con:

What's the Mishka origin story?

Mikhail Bortnik (left): It started sometime in '03. My job I was working at was going to close, so I decided to take a stab at t-shirt design, which I had wanted to do since college. This was about the same time I met Greg. A few months into it, I realized I was in over my head so I asked Greg to join on-board and sell the line. Greg immediately came on as a full-time partner. The basic idea was we wanted to sell street wear, but we soon realized there were so many fans who were into both street wear and scifi that there was absolutely no reason we couldn't incorporate these two things.

In terms of scifi, what were your earliest influences?

Greg Rivera (right): A lot of our influences have come from B-horror films, straight-up scifi films, and comic books, especially for Mike. I was big into horror comics when I was kid and also things like The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside, anything with the ironic twist at the end. Both of us are also big toy fans. Being in our early thirties, we grew up with 1980s toys, which ended up being a huge influence in our designs.

MB: One example of this influence was in our Fall 2008 Skyway Trippers collection – we tweaked an Israeli Special Forces design to include the phrase "Spaceknights" in Russian, as a homage to the old Spaceknights comic and toy line.

ROM Spaceknight allusions? That's wild. On a similar note, Mishka has a roster of kaiju-like characters who appears on a lot of your apparel – i.e. the half-serpentine, half-ursine Death Adder and the Cyco Simon skull. What's the story behind them?

MB: Actually the notion of bringing characters into the clothing brand goes back to metal bands. Cyco Simon is a reference to [Megadeth's ] Vic Rattlehead and Eddie from Iron Maiden, and we wanted our own. As for the Death Adder, we use our designs to tell a story with him – he's often seen teaming up with our Soviet super-soldier character.

Are we going to see an Adult Swim series with these guys anytime soon?

MB: I'll be honest, Greg and I would love to be able to a comic book or cartoon series with them.

What was the first sci-fi influenced Mishka piece?

GR: "They Live" was probably one of the first ones. It's hard to remember since we've had so many designs over time.

One of my early favorites was your Judge Death-inspired "Kill Motherfucking Depeche Mode" logo.

MB: That was a mixing of the old Brian Bolland artwork with what people guessed [what the name of German industrial band] KMFDM stood for. KMFDM actually gave us a cease-and-desist for that one.

Really? Not the 2000 AD people?

MB: We figured we'd get something from them or Depeche Mode, but no, it was from the KMFDM people!

On a similar note, when was that moment when you said to yourselves, "Holy crap. We can't believe we just put that on a t-shirt."

MB: The "Tom of Eternia" t-shirt.

GR: Mike had the idea of doing a Tom of Finland-style shirt [featuring He-Man].

MB: If you've never hear of Tom of Finland, he's like the homoerotic artist. There was this impetus [to create this shirt] early on when someone made the comment that all we do is put naked girls and 80s cartoon characters on our shirts. Street wear on a whole seems more macho than we are as a brand, so Greg and I were like, let's do this.

GR: Our friend Robin Nishio – who is this amazing illustrator – met up with us and Mike pitched him the idea. Robin actually went and bought two big books on Tom of Finland and aped the style exactly. That was the coolest because we got so much shit from our customers because it was like, "Here's Skeletor as the master and He-Man down on his knees, gay porn style."

What sort of pieces are in the pipeline at the moment?

GR: We did this series of shirts for [the new heavy metal-themed video game] Brutal Legend and we're working with Dark Horse Comics on a project.

Oh wow, are you at the liberty to talk about that right now?

MB: Not really, but if anyone has followed our brand, you'll know that one particular Dark Horse character particularly sticks out.

As far as the Winter 2009 line goes, you seem to have strong robot theme going. You have the Terminator cyclops, the Decepticon hearse, and my favorite, the Ultron bear. Why robots this season?

MB: We've gone so far doing themes that this season just happened to be robots. This was probably one of our most rigid designs themes. The Ultron shirt's been particularly popular.

You guys hit up the San Diego Comic-Con this year. How was it being a street wear brand at what's been historically a comic and scifi show?

MB: We were selling some things there, but we were mostly there as fans.

GR: It's been a little calculated – and not to reveal all our secrets – but if a lot more other brands saw the potential of that market, you'd see a lot more people doing it. It's hard for us to do business, because Mike and I go and we're just geeking out. Besides going out there to meet Tim and Eric [from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!], we're both really into Japanese kaiju and we had the chance to show off our own kaiju designs.

MB: Comic-Con 2008 was my first one. We wanted to see the Lost panel, but after we saw it spilling into the street, we just said "fuck it" and went to the Battlestar Galactica panel. That crowd was pretty big too, but Dean Koontz was still speaking. So yeah, we killed two hours listening to Dean Koontz.

Any good Mishka Comic-Con party tales?

GR: We crashed an Activision party at the Hard Rock Café and saw Stan Lee. If you're at a Comic-Con party and you see Stan Lee, you know you're at the coolest party.

MB: He was just hanging out with this girl on his arm.

GR: (laughs) She looked like she was twenty years old.

MB: I don't if she was, like, hitting on him or he was hitting on her, but Stan Lee's exactly how you picture him. He really says "true believer."

I wouldn't want him any other way. Do you find yourselves getting calls from influences who've enjoyed your work?

MB: Other than the artists who we're huge fans of and end up working with – like Derek Riggs and L'Amour Supreme – no, not really. A lot of our influences are grumpy old men.

What would you say is the most quintessential Mishka design?

GR: On our first trip to Japan, we stayed in this little town outside of Tokyo and found all these old Japanese horror and sci-fi press kits. These kits would take the coolest part of the movie and turn it into poster art. We found this great Westworld kit and Mike added some comic book stuff, like Ultron and Cyborg from Teen Titans to the design. To this day, it's still one of my favorite ones.

MB: We also found this Motel Hell kit in which we used for our "Electric Funeral" shirt. We electrified the faces and it turned out great.

Alright guys - some final lightning round questions. Kim Cattrall in Big Trouble in Little China or Kirstie Alley in Wrath of Khan?

MB: Kim Cattrall. I'm a Next Generation fan, what can I say.

Zardoz or Troll 2?

GR: Troll 2.

MB: Zardoz.

Would you rather have John Carpenter compose you a personal theme song or direct a movie about your life?

MB: I'd rather have him direct the movie because then he'd have to compose the film's theme song.

Shit! I hadn't thought of that loophole. Any final words to io9 readers?

GR: By all means check Mishka out - you'll definitely find something you like.

Mishka apparel is available at their website and their Brooklyn store at 350 Broadway in Williamsburg, NYC. Store photography courtesy of Dave Digioia.

As we mentioned the other day, the Gunslinger - Westworld's most deadly robot-gone-wrong - has many qualities about him to admire, not least of which his unerring aim and lack of stress under fire (literally); his was a coolness so great that he even managed to survive the far inferior Futureworld without losing his credibility. But let's be honest, there's one particular reason why he remains one of the greatest killer robots ever to appear on the silver screen: He was first.

By now, the idea of a killer robot that is unstoppable, silent, deadly and looks just like us has been done to death, but Yul Brynner's 1973 robotic lawman was the template for all that followed, and done so straight - because he was meant to be threatening, not post-ironic or ready with a catchphrase or quip at the appropriate time - that he remains scary to this day. Especially if you have a fear of The Magnificent Seven.

Westworld may not have aged well - Those hairstyles! That by-now overly-familiar stock Michael Crichton plot! - but Brynner's Gunslinger manages to sidestep everything with his timeless, "What if Johnny Cash was a stone cold killer?" look and deliberately emotionless performance. Yes, there have been faster robots, stronger robots, even more deadly robots. But I'm not sure that there has ever been a flat-out cooler killer robot. Here's to you, Gunslinger. Now, please: Just put that gun down and let's talk this over.

It's the "uncanny valley," the mysterious place where robots become lifelike enough to trip some of our systems for detecting fellow humans... but there's still something wrong with them. And the scariest killer bots often nestle malignantly smack in the middle of the uncanny valley, waiting to freak us the fuck out. Does this make them deadlier than other killer robots? Only if fear paralyzes you and makes it harder for you to strategize.

We're comfortable with robots as long as we can easily tell they're robots, and there's something abstract and mechanistic about them. But once a robot looks enough like us, but without all of our human mannerisms and foibles, we suddenly become uncomfortable. You can see it in David Byrne's singing robot, Julio. And in the guy who made a robot version of his girlfriend (left). (And she didn't dump him, why again?)

We've already charted the relationship between a robot's human likeness and how evil it is. But I'd argue that the scariest, and therefore most effective, killer robots are the ones which fall into that nether zone between artificial-looking and totally human. Just look at Masahiro Mori's famous chart. The "uncanny valley" refers to robots that remind us of corpses and zombies. So it's partly the stiffness and jerky motion, as well as the feeling of deadness, that creep us out.

Here are some examples of how robots that seem like dead humans, or humans lacking some "spark" of life, are scarier than other kinds:

Battlestar Galactica:

For my money, the "skinjobs" in BSG were actually pretty scary and intense in the first couple of seasons, when they seemed the most inhuman. For one thing, in a sense, the "skinjobs" are dead, since we keep seeing them die and come back. The famous scene where Caprica Six is tossing Starbuck around is partly so awesome because Six's abnormal strength also makes her seem more jerky and suddenly less human. In later seasons, the Cylons started to seem more and more like regular humans, and even lost their ability to resurrect.

Alien:

Just check out this scene with Ash, the creepy android whose secret corporate agenda is not terribly human-friendly. He even looks sort of like a zombie, with weird fluid coming out of his mouth:

Doctor Who, "Robots Of Death":

I'll be writing more about this 1977 storyline later on this week, but I would be remiss to leave it out here. The eponymous deadly robots in this story are deliberately designed to look cold and unresponsive, so we're not really surprised when they "suddenly" go all red-eyed and start strangling people. But the true genius of this story is that it verbalizes just why people are so terrified of lifelike robots: it's their deadness. The newly invented disease "robophobia" (or Grimwade's syndrome) takes this fear of corpse-like stiffness and pushes it to its farthest extreme.

Blade Runner:

Let's accept, for the moment, that the artificial "Replicants" are actually robots in some sense. (It's kind of vague in the movie, IIRC, and they definitely have a biological component.) They're stronger and smarter than regular humans, but they're also closer to death, because they have an in-built expiration date.

The Terminator:

You can't get more zombie-like than the original T-800, played by Arnie in his prime. Arnie has never been stiffer, and deader-looking, than when he plays this unstoppable murder machine. Especially once he gets some face damage, and he starts wearing those sunglasses, so he has absolutely no expression whatsoever. You shoot him and blast him, and he keeps getting up... because he's already dead. Not to mention, he turns into a walking skeleton, which doesn't hurt, either.

Westworld:

OMG this is the clincher as far as I'm concerned. Yul Brynner is the walking dead in this movie. Look at his frozen expression and how it slowly turns into a rictus smile when he says "Draw." Now I'm going to have nightmares of him singing "Shall We Dance" while dismembering people:

Star Trek, "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"

This is is the classic zombie-bot strategy: have one robot who clearly resembles a dead guy, and give him a creepy name like Ruk, or Krob, or Glop, and then nobody will notice that the rest of you are all zombie robots as well. Just look at Dr. Korby's stiff, jerky motion and empty eyes. Even Shatner looks more deathlike after he's a robot:

I, Robot:

There was a lot wrong with this Will Smith Converse All-Stars vehicle... but one thing it got right was the fact that its deadly robots look totally like ghosts, pale and almost translucent... and they have the nearly-but-not-quite human expressions as well:

Eve Of Destruction:

Those staring eyes. The way she flirts and laughs with absolutely no real expression. The way she covets people's fashion items. She is a hot dead lady, and she's out to kill you. Her only means of showing emotion is to make her eyes even bigger and buggier. It's up to Gregory Hines, that dancing fool, to put her back in her box. Which sounds a lot dirtier than it probably really is:

The Bionic Woman's Fembots:

Like Eve in Eve Of Destruction, the "fembots" in Bionic Woman are dead girls. They're blank-eyed, stiff and heartless, and there's something just "wrong" about them, even before their faces inevitably fall off:

Alas, the archives don’t tell us much more than that the robot was built by Robert Wolfe and that the pictures were taken in 1960, so it’s impossible (even with the help of the interwebs) to figure out just why TV actor Mike Connors was pictured in an attempt to outdraw the mechanical marshal (perhaps it was to publicize Connors then-current cop drama, Tightrope). Crichton famously took Brynner’s character in The Magnificent Seven as his visual inspiration for The Gunslinger—but Wolfe’s “pistol-shooting robot” looks awfully familiar, too.

"Pistol shooting robot invented by Robert Wolfe."

"TV actor, Mike Connors, trying to outdraw pistol-shooting robot."

"Robot equipped with fast-draw invention shoots it out with live gunner."

Life Photo Archive [Google]

This footage was taken with someone's video camera, so it's obviously not perfect, but it is the only gameplay footage available of Champions Online. Cryptic has indicated that this demo represents a game still in development - the UI in particular is a work in progress. The robot cowboys are pretty cool, though. They totally ripped off Wonder Woman's golden lasso. Maybe they're riding invisible horses?

Image by: Cryptic.

Four Champions Online gameplay videos surface. [Massively]

• Big Guy: If you haven't read Frank Miller and Geof Darrow's Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot oversized graphic extravaganza, then you need to go out and pick it up right now. We'll wait. Ready? Okay. Big Guy is an over-armed, over-achieving battletank complete with his own boy scout do-gooder companion, Rusty. Now, the secret is that Big Guy is actually pilot by Lieutenant Dwayne Hunter, so he's not really a sentient robot. However, the world at large doesn't know this, and if you assemble a robot army, you're going to want to fight in it, right? Well, here's your e-ticket. We'd take him over Voltron or the Power Rangers megabot any day.
• Maxmillian from Disney's The Black Hole: This blood red robot could hover and had whirling blades at the ends of his arms... what's not to love? Sure he had good old laser blasters, but when he could turn your guts into a blended smoothie, who cared about guns? His ominous, scary head terrified me as a kid, and he'll do the same to human ground troops. Just keep him away from circular saws and other cutting tools.Oh, he also serves as a handy storage device for deposed megalomaniacs as well, in case you find yourself needing that sort of thing.
• Nixon from Hard Boiled: Geof and Frank also collaborated on the amazing Hard Boiled, which features more destruction and mayhem than a Michael Bay movie, all in intricately drawn in Geof Darrow's "obsessive attention to detail" style. Armed with just a handgun and his bare (later robotic) fists, Nixon cleaves his way through just about everything you can imagine, including giant barreling cars and a dog with laser beams for eyes.
• The Iron Giant in KickAss Mode: Have you seen The Iron Giant? This sadly unappreciated film was directed by Brad Bird for Warner Bros. animation, and really deserved a larger audience. The quirky 1950s retro-setting was perfect for this story about a lost alien robot superweapon who winds up on Earth and wants to be Superman. Of course, when he went haywire and turned into a giant gun that could take out anything, that's when he was at his most awesome. Of course, the movie wanted you to think that was bad, but we think it's incredible. Bring on the big guns!
• The Robot from Lost in Space: He may not have had a name (although his crate said ONE General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental ROBOT, so he might have been GUNTER), but he was loyal, always at the ready, and able to shout "Danger!" whenever something alarming was about to happen. Plus he was a perfect foil for that nebbishy Doctor Smith. Now, the Lost in Space movie might not have thrilled everyone (I actually enjoyed it), but the updated Robot in that (with the same voice) was a badass with plasma blasters attached. Both versions had treads, waving arms, and a giant round head. What more can you ask for? Well, step one would be to order him to destroy Matt LeBlanc.
• The Terminator from The Terminator: You can't really make a list of badass robots without including the Terminator, but which model do you pick? All of them? Only one? The T-1000? The Arnie models? The Summer Glau-bot? We have to go with the original from the first movie, because he was much grittier, to the point, and without a sense of humor. Plus he could growl out "Fuck you, asshole" better than any of the other models, who apparently had their language sanitized.
• Soundwave from The Transformers: Screw Optimus Prime and Megatron, even though either one would be a more powerful, logical choice. No, we like Soundwave because of his awesome voice. Who didn't want to talk like an old-school Cylon? Plus he could transform into a Walkman and fool all of your friends. Plus the cassettes became his recon sidekicks. The toy was a lot more heavily armed than the version in the cartoon, and a lot more badass. He had a microphone that could turn into a missile launcher. What more do you need? "RAVAGE, EJECT. OPERATION: ASS-KICKING."
• The Gunslinger from WestWorld: There is probably nothing scarier than a relentless Yul Brynner-bot without a face chasing after you relentlessly. Except maybe two of them. Just like the Terminator he never got tired, had a fast-walking pace that never faltered, and was always ready to blow your head off. Yul Brynner's own face was steely enough to be frightening, but once his own face popped off exposing the transistors and wires beneath he was nightmare-inducing.
• The Killbots from Chopping Mall: Originally released as Killbots, this Roger Corman produced film features three security robots going haywire in a mall in California and chopping everyone into shreds. Plus they had those creepy Cylon-esque red eyes which just meant they were up to no good. Strangely, it'd didn't do too well as Killbots, but they released it again as Chopping Mall, and it brought in some bucks. Not a blockbuster, to be sure, but check out what a gory name change can do. These are the guys you'd want on the front lines, cutting through the infantry so the big guns can sit back and wait.
• Ultron from Marvel Comics: Not only is Ultron one of the most ultimate killing robots ever devised, he also has a grinning visage that will scare the crap out of you just by seeing it. Granted, he was a bit unstable and the Avengers seemed to have no problem taking him down again and again, and he was even created by one of their own. However, if you can get past his epithet shouting, revenge driven programming, he'd make a good asset to have if you ever need to talk someone to death.
• Mechagodzilla: You've got to have one giant weapon you keep in reserve, ready to bust out and make everyone pee their pants just when the time is right. Who better than Mechagodzilla to do that? In fact, trot him out in his Godzilla disguise first, and then you have people thinking "Oh crap, it's Godzilla!" Then once they think they've defeated him, but actually just destroyed his fake Godzilla skin, you've got people thinking "Oh crap, it's Mechagodzilla! Screw it, we surrender." Built by aliens, he's a badass robo-copy of Japan's mightiest protector.
• Major Motoko from Ghost in the Shell: If you ever want to see a woman take on a tank all by herself with nothing more than an automatic rifle, then look no further. Sure, she's a cyborg with some cloaking technology, but that hardly makes her any less badass. As a field commander on the ground, Motoko could issue commands and kick ass at the same time. Of course, she'll also obsessively leave the field to follow up on Puppetmaster clues and hints, but that might be a small price to pay for her skills.
• HAL-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey: You'd need someone to run the numbers and come up with strategies while all the fighting was going on, and who better than good old, red-eyed HAL back at the base crunching scenarios? Of course, the downside is that is things start looking like they might threaten HAL at all, he'll pull the plug on everyone else to save himself. However, he'd explain it to you in that calm, easy cadence, so you probably wouldn't mind at all.

• Johnny Five from Short Circuit: This guy couldn't kick any ass, so make him zip back and forth in a shooting gallery style and let your 'bots with distance weapons take shots at him.
• David from A.I.: If you want to train your bots on how to capture kids and hold them for ransom, use good old David-bot and his Teddy for some games of hide and seek in urban settings. Just be gentle, because the kid could hardly eat spinach, let alone take a pulse-rifle blast to the spine.
• V.I.N.C.E.N.T. from The Black Hole: Okay, I'll say it here, I have a true soft spot for this movie, and for V.I.N.C.E.N.T. However, he wouldn't have been too effective as a soldier (unless you had just offed his buddy B.O.B... continually), so if you put him out to pasture for target practice, at least he'd be doing some good. Sorry, little buddy *sniff*.
• C3P0 from Star Wars: R2D2 may be useful enough to keep around in an engineering or repair bay somewhere, but C3P0 was useless. No speed, no weapons, and a mouth that wouldn't quit? Use him for hand-to-hand combat training and see how many languages he can say "Not in the face!" in.
• Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation: Come on, how annoying did this guy get? Surround him in an open field and let the whole crew go to town. Keep spare parts around so you can repeat this over and over.

• 
  
• The plot is pretty basic: tourists visit a theme park and interact with realistic, lifelike androids. Of course, something goes wrong and they start murdering everyone, which makes it hard to run a business.
• 
  
• In the sequel, FutureWorld, the park is reopened after they've spent $1 billion dollars in safety improvements. They invite reporters (played by Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner) to come check the place out and vouch for the place. Whoops, something goes wrong. Again. Only this time, the demented theme park owner is trying to duplicate world leaders in cloned android form. There is nothing like an evil Walt Disney.
• 
  
• Yul Brynner's final film west FutureWorld, where he appeared again as the Gunslinger in a semi-dream sequence.
• 
  
• In the final sequence of FutureWorld, one of the dying clones tells the head scientist "They're the wrong ones!" as Fonda and Danner leave the facility. They were supposed to be replaced by evil clones who would give Delos a rave review, but they were outsmarted by the real thing. Fonda turns around and flips the scientist the bird.
• 
  
• The television show, Beyond WestWorld, was about the security chief in Delos trying to stop the head scientist from using the robots to take over the world. That probably wasn't in the job description. The show featured plots like this, "Quaid (the scientist) gets his hands on some uranium, and John (the security chief) and Pamela (Connie Sellecca!) must find another android who is hiding in a rock band." Why this was canceled after only five episodes, we'll never know.
• 
  
• Michael Crichton was inspired to make this film after visiting Disneyland and seeing the animatronic figures on Pirates of the Caribbean, so you can now blame that attraction for at least five movies: WestWorld, FutureWorld, and all the the Johnny Depp Pirates movies.
• 
  
• This was the first movie to use digitized 2D computer graphics in a film, and the sequel FutureWorld was the first movie to use 3D graphics. In fact, in FutureWorld, the 3D hand you see on screen belongs to Edwin Catmull, the co-founder and president of Pixar and of Walt Disney Animation Studios.
• 
  
• The theme park in the film is actually called Delos, and was meant to be the ultimate vacation destination. Visitors could visit WestWorld, MedievalWorld or RomanWorld and actually have sex with the androids, who were programmed to be receptive to all sexual advances. All this pleasure only cost $1000 a day.
• 
  
• Yul Brynner's Gunslinger character is an homage to the character Chris he played in The Magnificent Seven, and he even wears the same outfit.
• 
  
• John Carpenter has said that the Gunslinger was an inspiration for the Michael Myers character in Halloween, and it sure seems like The Terminator owes a lot to this relentless killing machine as well..
• 
  
• The Brynner-Bot has his face burned off by acid at one point, which also destroys his visual circuits. However, he has infrared backups, and spends the rest of the film chasing the main character while faceless. Trust us, it's cool.
• 
  
• Not really trivial... but doesn't James Brolin look a lot like Christian Bale in this flick?

In Soul Code, an older woman backs up her memories. And then she restores the backup into the brain of a much younger woman. And we discover how that brain-swap affects both women's relationships. (Not well, judging from the hints Linsberger drops.) It's sort of Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom meets The Handmaid's Tale.

Linsberger says the idea came from an interview with Chobot that turned into a brainstorming session. The movie's special effects will be less about creating a startling virtual world, and more about representing the emotional states of the characters.

So why will this movie be such a downer? Linsberger is still worried that artificial intelligences could turn into an oppressive Master Control Program that will make us play frisbee for our lives. But he's also scared of the Singularity, the moment when AIs supposedly become more advanced than humans. He wants us to think about how to preserve our humanity in a world where consciousness can be simulated as well as recorded. Soul Code could be a throwback to beware-technology movies of the 1970s like Rollerball and Westworld instead of building on Tron, which arguably helped replace them. [SFSignal]

1. RoboCop: The Series (1994).
Original cast? No.
Out on DVD? In England, but not in the U.S.
How many episodes? 22
What went wrong: In an effort to make a kid-friendly RoboCop show, the producers toned down the violence and had RoboCop explore "non-violent" alternatives to killing criminals. Recurring bad guys included Boppo the Clown, Dr. Cray Z. Mallardo and "Pud Face." No, really. Here's the opening credits.

2. Alien Nation (1989-91).
Original cast? No.
Out on DVD? Yes.
How many episodes? 22, plus a few TV movies
What went wrong: The TV version lost the noir tone of the movie about aliens living among us. In its place came good-natured humor with lots of banter. The cynical human cop teams up with an alien policeman and they tackle social issues. Watch them save an alien hooker from her pimp:

3. Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (1997-2000)
Original cast? No.
How many episodes? 66.
Out on DVD? No.
What went wrong: Every week, another experiment gone bendy. Plus obligatory subplots about the kids having crushes on other kids, and learning lessons, yadda yadda. Every episode title starts with "Honey." Including: "Honey, We've Been Swallowed by Grandpa." "Honey, I'm Streakin'." "Honey, The Garbage Is Taking Us Out." And my favorite: "Honey, I'm Wrestling With A Problem... And The Chief." Huh? Here's the first five minutes of the pilot. Note the goofy dog covering its face when disaster strikes:

4. Beyond Westworld (CBS: 1980)
Original cast? No.
# of episodes? five, but only three aired.
Out on DVD? Nope.
What went wrong: Westworld hit big with a robot theme-park turned homicidal. A sequel, Futureworld, bombed, so writer/director Michael Crichton decided to try again on television. Every week, Simon Quaid tries to take over the world using android nuclear-sub crewmen and android rock stars. The good guy: John Moore, who spends most of his time watching cheerleaders with his binoculars. Just like in this clip, where Quaid sends a robot duplicate of Connie Sellecca to kill Moore:

5. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures (1992)
Original cast? No, and in fact Alex Winter denounced the show on Arsenio Hall.
# of episodes? Eight, including unaired pilot.
Out on DVD? Hell no.
What went wrong: The producers "took liberties" with the movie's time-travel format, having Bill and Ted travel inside cable TV and into alternate dimensions. In one episode, Rufus (the George Carlin character) has a bad dream about Ted being sent to military school, and travels back to prevent it coming true. But instead, he causes that disaster, by engraving "Chicken Kiev" instead of Ted's father's name on an award. (Huh?) This enrages Ted's dad, who hates chicken kiev. Ted, off to military school, blames Bill for the mix-up and they become enemies. In another episode, Bill and Ted's boss becomes King Arthur:

6. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-81)
Original cast: Yes
# of episodes: 31
On DVD: Yes
What went wrong: The movie was a glorified TV pilot, but it did run in theaters. And like other movies-turned-shows, the series lost most of the themes of the pilot, such as the post-apocalyptic devastation outside of the dome of New Chicago. Instead, it was all about Buck strutting around settings like "Vegas in Space," wearing a skin-tight white jumpsuit with a rainbow armband. And then in the second season, with Hawkman and Dr. Goodfellow, it got really campy:

7. Starman (ABC: 1986-87)
Original cast: No.
# of episodes: 22
On DVD: No.
What went wrong: Instead of husband-wife bonding like in the movie, this time our visiting alien (Robert Hays) bonds with the son who never knew him. They travel around together righting wrongs and learning important lessons. It's a Hulk/Fugitive riff except with a kid in tow. Here's the opening credits, plus Hays dealing with some pushy cops:

8. Logan's Run
Original cast: No.
# of episodes: 14
On DVD: No, but you can download episodes on Amazon Unboxed.
What went wrong: Yet another road-trip show. Logan escapes the city where they kill you when you reach 30. And then he travels around the post-apocalyptic world with his friend Jessica and an android named Rem. They encounter various other societies, including some robots and aliens. William Nolan, author of the original Logan's Run novel, actually worked on this show, and so did Star Trek alums Harlan Ellison, David Gerrold and D.C. Fontana. Here are the opening credits. Check out the furry alien costumes:

Famous names: Michael Crichton, Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin, Majel Barrett

Crunchy goodness: 2

Ripoff: Two decades later, with better special effects and a better director at the helm, writer Crichton ripped himself off with Jurassic Park, another tale of an amusement park gone terribly wrong. Apparently CGI raptors make more compelling bad guys than Yul Brynner's cowboy bot.

Life lesson: The robots will rise up and kill you. How many times do we have to tell you that before you LISTEN?

Stunt casting: Yul Brynner, AKA Hottie McHotterson of the 1960s, played countless cowboys in Western flicks in a rather robotic manner - casting him here as a robot cowboy is both satiric and appropos.

Movie Gadget Friday: Robot Gunslinger from Westworld