Category: Entertainment

The DC Universe expands further into the cosmos this month with the addition of "Lanterns".

Created by Chris Mundy, Tom King and Damon Lindelof, the superhero show sees the veteran Green Lantern Hal Jordan (played by Kyle Chandler) take rookie John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) under his wing. Wider parts of the Green Lantern Corps lore are incorporated in the story too, as the series unpacks what the famous space cops are all about.

At the same time, let's be real here for a second: for anybody who hasn't kept track of all the DC reboots, Infinite Crises on Corporate Earths and Ryan Reynolds in a green CGI costume, it can become overwhelming to even think about the Green Lantern mythology.

There are many heroes and villains scattered across an overly complex timeline, so let's attempt to break down who's who in terms of the confirmed characters for the show and what their backstory is from the comics.

Here's everything you need to know about the characters in HBO's "Lanterns"

Hal Jordan

First appearance: "Showcase" #22 (1956)

Played by: Kyle Chandler

While not the first Green Lantern introduced by DC (that honour belongs to Alan Scott), Hal Jordan is arguably the most famous of them all. Debuting in the pages of "Showcase" #22, Hal found himself drawn to the spaceship belonging to Abin Sur, the Green Lantern of Sector 2814. The dying alien instructed his power ring to find a worthy successor, and it did in the form of the test pilot known as Hal Jordan.

While known primarily as a hero, Hal had a memorable stint as the villainous Parallax in the '90s. Hey, it was an edgy era, but at least he didn't have infinite pockets for his costume and badly drawn feet to go along with it!

Ryan Reynolds played a live-action version of Hal Jordan in the heavily derided 2011 "Green Lantern" movie, but Kyle Chandler's interpretation in "Lanterns" is a more seasoned and less CGIed version of the character. Interestingly enough, before Chandler was cast in the role, Josh Brolin was linked with the part.

John Stewart

First appearance: "Green Lantern" #87 (1972)

Played by: Aaron Pierre

So here's the part where DC's comic book logic tangles itself into knots. When Hal Jordan was selected as the Green Lantern, he received backup in Guy Gardner. After Guy was injured, Hal received a backup for his backup: John Stewart. Introduced as a civil rights activist and architect, John clashed with Hal at first; however, he went on to become the main Green Lantern in the '80s. After the New 52 reboot, John received another alteration to his backstory; this time, he was a former Marine.

For a generation of fans, John is their Green Lantern, thanks to him being the chosen Emerald Knight for the animated shows "Justice League" and "Justice League Unlimited". He almost appeared in "Zack Snyder's Justice League", where he would have been portrayed by Wayne T. Carr, but the whole debacle around that movie and the Snyder Cut is worthy of its own miniseries.

Aaron Pierre won the role of John Stewart in "Lanterns", triumphing over names like Damson Idris and Stephan James for the gig. One only needed to watch Netflix's "Rebel Ridge" to see his take on a former Marine and realise he was born to play John.

Guy Gardner

First appearance: "Green Lantern" #59 (1968)

Played by: Nathan Fillion

Ah, the Green Lantern with the worst haircut in the universe. The origin story of Guy Gardner is actually interesting, despite his questionable barber choices.

In "Green Lantern" #59, it's revealed that Guy was also a potential contender to be Abin Sur's heir. The only reason the ring went to Hal Jordan was that he was closer in terms of location. Guy became Hal's backup and eventually assumed the mantle of Green Lantern.

As a character, Guy is something of a prickly pear. He is prone to outbursts and not exactly a people person. However, his heart is in the right place, and he'll show up when necessary for others.

Nathan Fillion returns to play Guy Gardner in "Lanterns", having previously played the character in "Superman" and "Peacemaker" season 2. Oh, and he was all in for Guy's haircut. "I was team bowl cut the whole way," he said on the "DC Studios Showcase Official Podcast." "It's canon. It's set."

Sinestro

First appearance: "Green Lantern" #7 (1961)

Played by: Ulrich Thomsen

Much like other characters in the DC Universe, Thaal Sinestro has experienced changes to his backstory with the various reboots and continuity switch-ups altering his motivations and personality. What does remain consistent is that he's an alien from the planet Korugar who became a member of the Green Lantern Corps once upon a time. He was highly revered among his peers, but he abused his powers, became a dictator, and received the boot as a consequence of his actions.

Not one to be deterred, Sinestro founded the Sinestro Corps, which uses the yellow light of fear to power it. Naturally, this puts him at odds with the Green Lantern Corps – but Sinestro really really despises the Guardians of the Universe the most here.

In "Lanterns", Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen plays Sinestro. The first footage of him didn't exactly inspire fans since he failed to have the reddish-purple skin tone associated with the character from the comics. However, the true outrage should have been about the lack of a wispy moustache. This Sinestro's muzzle fuzz shares more in common with Mario than anything else.

Manhunters

First appearance: "1st Issue Special" #5 (1975)

Before the Green Lantern Corps, the Guardians of the Universe created the robots known as the Manhunters. Their sole purpose was to fight evil and restore law and order. If this sounds like a potential nightmare out of Sam Altman's OpenAI playbook, it's because it is.

While the Manhunters worked well at first, their obsession with catching criminals and inability to define what justice is saw them go rogue. And as you know, once the genie is out of the bottle, it's tough to put it back in!

At the time of writing, it's unclear exactly how the Manhunters fit into "Lanterns", except for the fact that they shapeshift and are dangerous. Their inclusion in the show makes sense, though, since they're the predecessors to the Green Lantern Corps.

Guardians of the Universe

First appearance: "Green Lantern" #1 (1960)

Want to know who to blame for DC's multiverse? Well, it's a rogue Maltusian Krona, who couldn't help but peek back in time to see how the universe was created. As a result, Krona's peers decided to band together and form the Guardians of the Universe, an organisation that wants to keep the universe safe from all kinds of threats.

These immortal beings assembled various groups (including the Green Lantern Corps) in an effort to bring about order and peace. Oh, and Sinestro hates them – in case you hadn't figured that out yet.

As the creators of the Green Lantern Corps, it's expected they'll play a role in "Lanterns". To date, only Laura Linney has been confirmed as one of the Guardians.

On August 16, "Lanterns" wills itself into existence on HBO.

On Episode 223 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and guest co-host Dale Skran are joined by Dr. Scott Pace to discuss the future of exploration on the Moon.

We're headed for a space renaissance, and it will be focused on the Moon. The US, China, and international partners of both are vying to land people there and construct a permanent lunar base. Meanwhile, NASA is evolving to embrace commercial enterprise unlike any time in its past, and American lunar efforts are lagging.

What are the stakes? Does it matter who returns humans there first? What does the future of lunar commerce look like? Dr. Scott Pace, the Director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, joins us.

Download or subscribe to this show at: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space.

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Space news of the week

• Dr. Scott Pace

Model Falcon 9!

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About This Week In Space

This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?

Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.

Eighteen years later, it still gives me a jump scare, even though I know it's coming.

Agent Mulder, hot on the trail of a group of murderers who are harvesting their victims' organs, breaks into a makeshift laboratory in an attempt to save an abducted woman. He finds a gruesome scene of bodies on ice and surgeons, scalpels in hand, preparing to transplant the villain's head onto the abducted woman's body. Mulder turns and  — there it is! The villain's severed head on ice! And it opens its eyes.

It sounds less like a scene out of a science fiction mystery series and one more suited to a horror film. And that's precisely why Chris Carter, creator of "The X-Files", is revisiting the 2008 film "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" in a new R-rated director's cut coming to Hulu on Aug. 14.

Space.com got the chance to speak with Carter about the upcoming director's cut and the inspiration behind revisiting the standalone "X-Files" film nearly two decades after its release.

"I wanted to make the scary movie that I always had intended to make, intended to direct, and this is more in line with that," Carter told Space.com. "It gave me a chance to remember the making of the movie and what I had intended it to be, and how different it was from that original vision."

The director's cut features a new addition to the film's title  — "The X-Files: I Want to Believe  — Vrach Frankenshteyn". Carter said the name at the end (Russian for "Doctor Frankenstein") is a way of alluding to the tone and themes that he intended to focus on in the original film.

"It's a Frankenstein story, and the original inspiration for it was a doctor in Cleveland, Ohio, who transplanted the head of a monkey onto another monkey, and I thought that is perfect X-Files territory," Carter said.

Carter's original version of the film was re-edited two times in order for it to be released with the PG-13 rating that 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios) insisted upon.

"When we first made the movie, we had a vision, and we tried to bring it to life. And when we took it to the executives at 20th Century Fox, they said, 'This isn't a PG-13 movie. This is torture porn.'

"And so we cut it back to what we thought was a PG-13 movie to placate the executives, and then we gave it to the motion picture censors, and they said this isn't a PG-13 movie."

With many of the horror elements cut or toned down, the 2008 theatrical release ended up focusing quite a bit of time on the relationship between Mulder and Scully  — a fan-favorite part of the series for sure, but not one that Carter intended to be so central to "I Want to Believe."

The film's plot centers on a group of women who go missing. When a disgraced priest begins having supernatural visions of the missing women, agents Mulder and Scully come out of retirement to take on another case full of mysteries and unexplained events. Their investigation finds them uncovering an illegal organ harvesting operation, bizarre life extension experiments conducted by a murderous mad scientist, and unexplained supernatural occurrences and synchronicities: classic "X-Files" fare.

But despite being rooted in the long-running themes of the nine-season series, the film is accessible for first-time "X-Files" viewers or casual fans (or its underrated spin-off).

Rather than diving into the dense, overlapping conspiracies that form the series' core mythology of alien invasion and the government cover-up that keeps it a secret, "The X-Files: I Want to Believe  — Vrach Frankenshteyn" is what is referred to as a "monster of the week" story. It's a standalone plot that doesn't require a deep knowledge of the series or its mythology to enjoy.

Interestingly, the film breaks with the tradition of director's cuts featuring loads of deleted scenes and footage that never made it past the cutting room floor. It actually features a shorter runtime than the theatrical release.

"And everyone asks me that; why is it with most directors' cuts they're always longer because they throw everything in that got cut out. In this case, I felt it could be streamlined a little," Carter said. "I lightened up a little bit on the Mulder and Scully relationship beats and focused more on the horror movie that we really wanted to make."

In keeping with "X-Files" tradition, the director's cut also leaves many of its core mysteries and supernatural elements unresolved. That central theme, the ongoing search for truth and meaning in a sometimes mysterious and unexplainable universe, reflects Carter's own views.

"I really think of science as a search for God, and there are so many big questions that are unanswered, and we are trying to find the answers to those things," Carter said. "And will those answered questions bring us closer to an idea or a how it how it all began? What came before the Big Bang?"

Perhaps in a case of life imitating art, another key theme of "The X-Files" has made its way into the halls of the White House and Capitol Hill in recent years.

The U.S. government has held several congressional hearings discussing disclosure of alleged UFO secrets. The Trump administration has even released dozens of files, images and videos of alleged UFOs, or UAPs, as they're now known. Conspiracy theories of all kinds, particularly when it comes to aliens, have become mainstream.

Does that mean the truth is really out there? It certainly shows that we, as a nation, want to believe. But whatever the case may be, it is that same wonder, the same drive to question authority and probe the unknown, that drives Chris Carter to explore "The X-Files" after more than three decades.

"In every conspiracy is the kernel of truth, and that's interesting to me as a storyteller," Carter said.

"The X-Files: I Want to Believe  — Vrach Frankenshteyn" debuts on Hulu on Aug. 14, 2026.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "A CASE OF CHIAROSCURO" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.

You're on a top-secret mission to recover a lost Federation probe from enemy territory. A close encounter with a Klingon cruiser forces you into hiding on the surface of an alien world, which — thanks, in part, to the local star's radiation making everything appear stylishly monochrome — looks like it's been lifted from a classic 20th-century film noir. You dress up as one of the locals on this occupied world, and quickly learn that you're the spitting image of the leader of the local resistance. What are the chances?

This being "Star Trek", the odds are nowhere near as long as they could — and maybe should — be. In fact, the galaxy is so chock-full of doppelgangers, clones and lookalikes that it's a wonder Una "Number One" Chin-Riley hadn't encountered her double before the latest episode of "Strange New Worlds", "A Case of Chiaroscuro".

This may explain why Dr M'Benga doesn't think anything is particularly amiss. "In a universe as vast as ours, the real mystery is that we don't stumble onto our doppelgangers more often," he claims. "That we have found Una's is a momentary stroke of luck."

That said, the origin stories of Trek's previous escapees from the planet Xerox are usually a little more complex — and outwardly sci-fi — than coincidence. The matter transporters found on every Starfleet vessel, for example, have repeatedly given actors the chance to play two roles at once.

In theory, transporter tech breaks you down into your constituent atoms, beams those particles across space, and reassembles them in the right order at the other end. But, in the event of a glitch, transporter rooms effectively become highly sophisticated 3D printers, creating duplicates indistinguishable from the original beamee.

In the "Original Series" episode "The Enemy Within", James T Kirk is split into two versions of himself, one good, the other evil. In this metaphysical exploration of self, it turns out you can't have one half without the other, forcing Spock and co to reintegrate the two Kirks in order to save their captain.

Will Riker also experiences transporter-induced imposter syndrome in "The Next Generation" episode "Second Chances". He learns that a beaming error on the USS Potemkin created an exact facsimile eight years earlier, and Riker 2.0 has been living alone on the remote Nervala IV ever since. Alas, this alt version (who opts to go by the name of Thomas) doesn't find it easy living in the shadow of the Enterprise-D's highly commended first officer, and eventually quits Starfleet to defect to the Maquis resistance organization.

When Bradward Boimler experiences similar duplication issues in "Lower Decks", it's his double, William, who makes better use of their resources. He ultimately finds himself in the captain's chair of a top-secret Section 31 vessel staffed by doppelgangers from alternative realities, including "Deep Space Nine"'s Dr Bashir, "Enterprise"'s T'Pol, and multiple incarnations of "Voyager"'s perennial ensign, Harry Kim.

"Trek"'s parallel universes are arguably even more conducive to duplication than transporter accidents. Indeed, even the Harry Kim who eventually makes it back from the Delta Quadrant in "Voyager" is an alternative version, transferred from a USS Voyager slightly out of phase with the original. (To be fair, OG Harry had just been sucked into the vacuum of space, so the switcheroo was easy to justify — and good news for actor Garrett Wang.)

But "Star Trek"'s most famous doppelgangers from another dimension hail from the infamous Mirror Universe, where the morally dubious Terran Empire crushes non-Earthers under a bloodthirsty boot — while the Federation traditionally comes in peace, these guys make no secret of their love of shooting to kill. Crews from "Enterprise", "Discovery", the Original Series, "DS9" and "Prodigy" have all come face to face with their evil twins. Few imposters have been quite as easy to spot as Terran Empire Spock, however, whose trademark goatee is something of a giveaway.

Shapeshifters are even trickier customers, seeing as they can — in theory — take the form of anyone they want. Kirk shares facetime with himself when Chameloid Marta impersonates him while messing up their attempt to escape the Rura Penthe penal colony in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country".

"I can't believe I kissed you," says Kirk. "Must have been your lifelong ambition," Kirk replies — sort that one out, Sigmund Freud.

The metamorphing Changelings of the Dominion also prove a particularly tricksy enemy in "Deep Space Nine", thanks to their ability to replicate everyone from Dr Bashir and General Martok to the Federation's in-house shapeshifter, Odo.

And then there's "Trek"'s dalliances with the more traditional sci-fi trope of cloning, the most famous example showing up just in time for "The Next Generation" crew's final mission.

The Big Bad in the 2002 movie "Nemesis" is Shinzon, a Jean-Luc Picard duplicate created by Romulan scientists to infiltrate the Federation. The irony, of course, is that this clone looks nothing like the source material. In fact, the chances of anyone buying that Tom Hardy will one day look like Patrick Stewart are close to zero — Dr M'Benga may believe that we should bump into our doppelgangers more often, but even he wouldn't fall for that one.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" debut on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

For the generation that grew up in the 1980s, the release of the recent big-budget "Masters of the Universe" movie would undoubtedly have conjured up a sense of déjà-vu.

Picture the scene. The year is 1987. You've got the action figures and the Castle Grayskull playset, you've watched every episode of the cartoon again and again, and you can recite He-Man's opening credits voiceover by heart. He has the power!

Then someone tells you there's a live-action film adaptation coming out.

You persuade your parents to take you to the theater, pick up a great big bucket of popcorn, and get ready to be transported to the familiar surroundings of Eternia. And then…

Well, it's fair to say this is not the "Masters of the Universe" you know and love. Sure, leading man Dolph Lundgren is big, but why does he look and dress nothing like He-Man? Who's that Gwildor guy, and what the hell happened to Orko, BattleCat and Prince Adam? Why do He-Man and Skeletor spend so much of the movie on planet Earth? And when are we going to hear that famous theme tune? (Spoiler: you won't.)

By the power of Grayskull, this was not the film '80s kids expected, or indeed wanted. But disappointing a pre-teen fanbase was the least of "Masters of the Universe"'s worries. Sales of Mattel's previously all-conquering toyline were way past their peak, while the appetite for films trying to capture "Star Wars"' unique blend of sci-fi and fantasy had all but disappeared. Perhaps more importantly, "MOTU" 1987 had been bankrolled by an ambitious but eccentric studio, whose efforts to break into the mainstream had left it in a financial state so perilous that not even the most powerful man in the universe could save it.

"Masters of the Universe" was one of the undoubted pop culture success stories of the 1980s. Although Mattel had made the mistake of turning down the licence to make "Star Wars" toys, the toy giant responded in spectacular style by launching a fantasy behemoth of its own in 1982. He-Man, Skeletor and their Eternian colleagues would soon become household names, largely thanks to the advertising power of an immensely popular cartoon series.

Decades before "Transformers", "The Lego Movie" and "Barbie" made big money at the box office, producer Edward Pressman had seen the potential in taking a toy franchise to the big screen. There had been early interest in "He-Man" from major studios (including Warner Bros), but — largely thanks to delays caused by management changes at Mattel — interest had waned by the time Cannon Films stepped in to foot the bill.

Throughout the '80s, Cannon had become more renowned for the quantity of its output than the quality, as a pair of ambitious Israeli cousins, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, invested in unashamed B-movies like "Enter the Ninja", Charles Bronson's "Death Wish" sequels, and Chuck Norris vehicle "The Delta Force". The studio had around 40 movies in production at the time "Masters of the Universe" got the green light, but was keen to make a move on tentpole blockbuster territory. As well as financing the disastrous "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace", Cannon had also paid Sylvester Stallone a record-breaking fee to headline arm-wrestling drama "Over the Top". Both flopped at the box office.

Despite being "a little bit reluctant because it was [based on] a toy line", Stallone's "Rocky IV" co-star Dolph Lundgren signed up to play the mighty He-Man. The Swedish actor looked more like the lead singer of a hair metal band than the sword-wielding hero of the cartoons, though his impressive physique (coupled with He-Man's scanty wardrobe) ensured it was hard to find a convincing stunt double.

Director Gary Goddard also became concerned that his leading man (topping the bill for the first time) wasn't delivering dialogue as he wanted, and subtly chopped some of Lundgren's lines. He reasoned that heroes played by Clint Eastwood are often men of few words, with their sidekicks usually the ones supplying the supplemental information.

There were never any doubts about the man playing He-Man's nemesis, Skeletor, however. Frank Langella had caught Goddard's eye in "Amadeus" on Broadway, and — buried under some impressive make-up — relished the opportunity to ham it up as Eternia's villain-in-chief. But this dark, calculating interpretation was a universe away from the cackling, frequently thwarted bad guy of the cartoon series. It wasn't the only way the film would completely lose track of what had made kids fall in love with the "Masters of the Universe" brand.

Even in 2026, with the help of CG effects and a colossal budget, the new "Masters of the Universe" had to pick and choose which classic Eternians — including Mekaneck, one of the weirdest "Masters of the Universe" characters — made the transfer to the big screen.

Spare a thought, though, for the 1987 fans who had to make do with (on Team He-Man) Man-at-Arms, Teela and the Sorceress; and (on Team Skeletor) Evil-Lyn and Beast Man.

Hovering wizard sidekick Orko was replaced by a new character, Thenurian inventor Gwildor, while Skeletor's rogues' gallery was expanded to the tune of lizard man Saurod, the sword-wielding Blade, and the not-sure-what-he-is Karg. Long-standing favorites like Trap-Jaw, Tri-Klops, and Mer-Man were conspicuous by their absence.

Skeletor was supported by legions of laser-wielding, Stormtrooper-esque soldiers, though — thanks to Mattel's mandate that He-Man couldn't kill anyone — these were robots rather than people. He-Man also tended to favor a laser gun of his own, mostly keeping his famous Sword of Power for show. He didn't even need the sword for a big transformation moment, seeing as alter-ego Prince Adam and his green tiger BFF Cringer were conveniently jettisoned from the story.

The movie's biggest problem, however, was arguably transferring the action to Earth. This didn't contradict franchise mythology (He-Man's mom, Queen Marlena, had long been established as an astronaut from Earth), and the new film has followed suit by bringing Adam to Oklahoma City. But in "Masters of the Universe" 1987, the decision simply made the action feel small — despite the best efforts of legendary "Star Wars" effects veteran Richard Edlund.

Human teens Courteney Cox (the "Friends" star's first movie role) and Robert Duncan McNeill ("Star Trek: Voyager") did their best to grapple with an extended visit from walking, talking action figures, but you'd never know this was a He-Man movie if people didn't keep saying his name.

When Eternia did get a look in, it exposed the film's financial limitations, as over-investment and a series of expensive flops started to catch up with Golan and Globus. Goddard had wanted to shoot exteriors in Iceland to capture a more otherworldly vibe but had to make do with a few days at Vasquez Rocks (a location near Los Angeles that frequently doubled for alien worlds in "Star Trek") towards the end of production.

Money was so tight that, on the final scheduled day of the shoot, the plug was pulled as soon as the clock struck midnight, before Goddard had all the coverage he wanted. The director later admitted that he made a deal to stump up $50,000 of his own money (a sum matched by Cannon) to fund one last day of shooting on He-Man and Skeletor's climactic battle. At least the film would have an ending…

But was it worth it? "Masters of the Universe" made a disappointing $17.3 million at the US box office. It was just the 65th highest-grossing release of 1987, and some way behind infamous stinker "Jaws: The Revenge". It certainly wasn't enough to save Cannon, which had sold off a large chunk of its film library earlier that year in order to stave off bankruptcy. The studio (by then known as Cannon Pictures) would release its final film in 1994.

"The Cannon boys were very charismatic and very ambitious," Lundgren recalled in the documentary "Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films".

"They were guys who came to Hollywood to take it over in a quick sort of way, perhaps not playing by all the rules but sometimes that works, and it worked for a while for these guys too. 'Masters' was their big shot, and even though it didn't reach the heights they'd wished for with 'Star Wars' and so forth, I think it's still a decent picture compared to some of the others they made. 'Masters' certainly beats 'Superman IV' in watchability."

"Masters of the Universe" 1987 is available to stream on Prime Video in the US and on Prime Video and ITVX in the UK.

Season 4 of Paramount+'s "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is off to a roaring start with episodes already airing centered around primeval dinosaurs, a haunted starship, and a hedonistic pleasure planet.

This week's chapter, titled "A Case of Chiaroscuro", airs on Aug. 13 and takes another bold swing, featuring a wartime film noir-style tale with tense galactic politics at its core.

We connected with three of "Strange New Worlds'" brightest stars — Anson Mount (Captain Christopher Pike), Rebecca Romijn (Lt. Cmdr Una Chin-Riley), and Carol Kane (Commander Pelia) — to hear about this penultimate season's boundary-pushing vision delivered by executive producers Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, and learn more about that Muppet episode called “Level-Five Transporter Accident” that's coming later this month on Aug. 20.

"We're all in agreement that season 4 and season 5 are the strongest seasons of the whole series," Romijn tells Space. "I think the producers had more time to prepare for season 4, and every episode felt incredible on the page. Every episode felt like a really fun challenge. We just had a blast.

"The writers think so outside the box, and I can't believe they come up with the things they come up with," continues Romijn. "Every time a writer asks, 'What haven’t you done that you’d like to do?' I can't even think as outside the box as our writers. I leave it up to them."

Mount echoes those sentiments and finds the sci-fi series to be fully engaged.

"It just feels like the bolts were tight," Mount adds. "We've built this incredible machine and we were able to take bigger leaps and have more fun. Even curve balls that came in season 1 and season 2. I grew tired of going to Akiva and Henry and saying, 'Are you sure about this?' And then those ended up being the episodes that really pop. So I stopped asking questions and trusted them. Also, I think the sense of consequence was heightened at the same time."

Even though Carol Kane's ancient Lanthanite character, Pelia, didn't arrive until the second season, even she senses a major shift in the show's momentum.

"I feel like as we went on people were more and more willing to take risks at every level, from the writing to the acting to the cinematography to the directing and the wardrobe," Kane notes. "It was like, what the hell. Let's roll them dice. I feel that was a wonderful freedom."

As fans eagerly anticipate the Muppet episode (they won’t be disappointed!), the trio all admitted that the Pelia puppet with its wild tangle of blonde hair was the one most of the cast wanted to take home with them.

Sadly, none of the actors were allowed to actually keep their Muppets, though if folks saw the price tag on those puppets they’d quickly understand why.

"We were already working on another episode," Mount explains when the surreal time arrived to record their particular puppets' dialogue. "It was really wild going into the recording booth and trying to do an interpretation of someone else’s interpretation of your character."

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" season 4 is now streaming on Paramount+.

Fans who'd grown up on the original "Star Wars" trilogy were adults when they went through the ordeal of Han, Luke and Leia dying on screen. If tears were shed then, however, spare a thought for the kids who'd queued to watch "Transformers: The Movie" back in 1986, only to see many of their heroes expiring in the cartoon spin-off's opening act.

If you can have a bloodbath of sentient machines, this was it, as robots in disguise met their maker at an alarming rate. Ironhide? Dead. Ratchet? No more. Starscream? Pushing up mechanical daisies. Not even the iconic Optimus Prime was spared, as the noble leader of the Autobots met a brutal end at the hands of his nemesis, Decepticon leader Megatron.

This may seem like a recipe for traumatizing the film's target audience — and for many of "Transformers: The Movie"'s young viewers, it was a genuinely disturbing experience. But toy manufacturer Hasbro had ulterior motives for killing their darlings.

Like "Masters of the Universe" (and many other '80s cartoons before and after), the popular "Transformers" TV show was a thinly veiled commercial for one of the hottest toylines on the planet. But, the theory went, the kids who'd been watching since the series debuted in 1984 would now be familiar/bored with the original line-up, and already have the relevant robots in disguise in their toyboxes. By instigating an on-screen cull, Hasbro believed they'd be able to make way for new characters, and keep their young fans coming back for more.

"They created the story using characters that could best be merchandised for the movie," director Nelson Shin (who, in a previous life, had helped to animate the lightsabers in the original "Star Wars") told SFX magazine in 2011. "Only with that consideration could I have freedom to change the storyline. What I tried to focus on was animation-izing the story. For example, when Optimus Prime died, I changed his color from red and blue into gray in order to show that the spirit was gone from his body."

Although screenwriter Ron Friedman was sceptical — "I told Hasbro and their lieutenants they would have to bring him back, but they said no and had 'great things planned'," he recalled to Todd Matthy.com — many of the production team had little idea of the emotional carnage they were about to unleash.

"We didn't know that [Optimus Prime] was an icon," story consultant Flint Dille admitted in an interview on the "Transformers: The Movie" DVD. "It was a toy show. We just thought we were killing off the old product line to replace it with new products.

"Kids were crying in the theaters," he continued. "We heard about people leaving the movie. We were getting a lot of nasty notes about it. There was some kid who locked himself in his bedroom for two weeks."

Forty years on from its original release, a movie with such a high death count looks like a misguided brand extension for a popular Saturday morning cartoon — especially as the TV incarnation hadn't killed anyone across its two seasons to date. But for all its flaws, "Transformers: The Movie"'s storytelling was arguably bolder than any other Hollywood animation of the era.

It was also an impressive technical feat. Although the visuals are a visible step-up from the TV version, Shin (who'd been supervising producer on the cartoon from day one) and his team had to work to extremely tight deadlines to meet the film's release date:

"Time constraints and the sheer amount of work needed were the two biggest challenges, since everything had to be hand-drawn by people!"

The film is set in 2005, some 20 years on from the original series. The Decepticons have taken control of the Transformer homeworld of Cybertron, while human Autobot chum Spike Witwicky (a kid in the TV show) is now grown up with a son of his own. When the villains attack the Autobots' base on Earth, Optimus Prime is fatally wounded, with Megatron also at death's door.

A moment where he pleads, "Don't leave me, Soundwave!" to his loyal cassette player lieutenant is unintentionally hilarious, though still can't compete with a later sequence in which the surviving Autobots dance for joy with some new allies — tonally this movie is all over the place.

Having been cast adrift by the duplicitous Starscream, Megatron runs into a planet-sized robot in disguise named Unicron, who has a similar world-chomping MO as Marvel's Galactus. He wants to get his hands on the Autobots' Matrix of Leadership (the only thing in the universe that can kill him), so he transforms a reluctant Megatron into the souped-up Galvatron, and sends him out to hunt for the McGuffin.

It makes for a madcap 85 minutes as two factions of mostly unfamiliar faces vie to come out on top. The story is mostly told via the medium of fast-paced laser battles, alongside encounters with the surprising number of robotic lifeforms who populate the galaxy. Among them are a five-faced being with a penchant for feeding its fellow machines to mechanical sharks, and some scrapyard dwellers whose conversation is based on snippets from TV ads.

The "Junkions"' leader, Wreck-Gar, is voiced by Monty Python's Eric Idle, just one of the numerous star names whose presence would have meant little, if anything, to the film's young audience back in 1986. Megatron's Galvatron upgrade brought with it the dulcet tones of "Star Trek"'s Leonard Nimoy, reckless Autobot up-and-comer Hot Rod was voiced by "The Breakfast Club"'s Judd Nelson, and Robert Stack (whom readers of a certain vintage will recognize from "Airplane!") was Optimus Prime's ultra-serious number two, Ultra Magnus.

The biggest name of all was a bona fide Hollywood legend, as Orson Welles delivered his final performance as Unicron. Of the "Citizen Kane" auteur, Shin said, "He was co-operative and professional, and I liked working with him," though Welles was apparently a little less convinced.

"You know what I did this morning?" he reportedly complained to a friend. "I played the voice of a toy… I menace somebody called something-or-other. Then I'm destroyed. My plan to destroy whoever-it-is is thwarted, and I tear myself apart on the screen."

The filmmakers also spent more of their reported $6 million budget than they probably should have on a soundtrack powered by '80s hair metal and power ballads — Stan Bush's "The Touch", originally written for Sylvester Stallone vehicle "Cobra", went on to have a second life when the fictional Dirk Diggler "covered" the song in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights".

In hindsight, few of the creative decisions above were conducive to winning over a fanbase who'd have been happy with an extended episode of the TV show. "Transformers: The Movie" subsequently struggled to make back its budget at the box office, an also-ran in a packed summer that also included "Aliens", "Flight of the Navigator" and "Short Circuit".

It's since gone on to pick up a cult following, but still feels like one for completists — ask a casual fan to name a Transformer, and they're going to say Optimus Prime, Bumblebee or Megatron ahead of movie debutants Kup, Arcee (belatedly the first female Autobot) or Rodimus Prime.

Perhaps inevitably, Optimus Prime didn't stay dead for long, and made his inevitable comeback in the next season of the TV show. The good/bad thing about living in a modern pop culture universe is that death doesn't have to be the end.

"Transformers: The Movie" returns to theaters with a 40th anniversary re-release on September 17. It's also available to buy or rent on Amazon Prime Video.

On Episode 222 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik are joined by space writer Rich Edwards to discuss the best ways to repel space invaders.

We've all seen the movies... the aliens come to Earth, the aliens overcome the inferior humans, and the aliens fall prey to something dumb they overlooked, like microbes, Windows 95, or most absurdly, water. From the 1950s through yesterday, some of the best movies we've seen were about the invasion of our planet. They can be clever, scary, or even downright dumb, but they are all fun.

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Space news of the week

• Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters
• Blue Origin traces origin of huge New Glenn rocket explosion to oxygen valve, CEO says
• Where will the total solar eclipse 2026 be visible from?
• SpaceX Question Time
• How to invade planet Earth: A sci-fi movie alien's guide to bringing the human race to its knees
• Alien movies in order: chronological and release
• Aliens' at 40: Here are 26 reasons why James Cameron's sequel is still the greatest sci-fi action movie of all time

Model Falcon 9!

Finally, did you know you can launch your own SpaceX rocket? Model rocket maker Estes' stunning scale model of a Falcon 9 rocket that you can pick up now. The launchable model is a detailed recreation of the Falcon 9 and retails for $149.99. You can save 10% by using the code IN-COLLECTSPACE at checkout, courtesy of our partners collectSPACE.com.

About This Week In Space

This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?

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