Carnac the Magnificent: "Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, and Spacehunter."

"The question is: Name two great movies and a dog."

A recent successful bid on the Heritage Auctions website added movie posters for Silent Running, Outland and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone to my modest collection. I received the package today, and I'm pleased with my purchases - well, mostly pleased, to be honest.

Silent Running? A favourite film for me, and a great transitional role for Bruce Dern. Outland - a well executed science fiction remake of High Noon, with a strong performance by Sean Connery.  Spacehunter?  Yes, well, Spacehunter...

As far as I can remember, Spacehunter wasn't in the original auction listing but seemed to make an appearance later, and there was never a photo of the poster, the image above is taken from another listing.  It's entirely possible that this item was grouped with the others so as to get the damn thing out the door, for all I know it had been collecting dust in the back room at Heritage for some time.

Faint praise aside, I have to admit that I did in fact see Spacehunter in its 1983 commercial release, back when the original Cineplex multiplex was located at the north end of the Eaton Centre in Toronto. This places me in elite company: the film only grossed $16.5M on a $14.4M budget.*  The film was produced using a two-camera technique called "Native 3D", and I do vaguely remember the 3-D effects, particularly the cyborg villain's metallic claws coming out of the screen.

On paper, all the pieces are there for a successful film.  The film was made in 3D as part of the shortlived craze of the early 80s, and has a reasonably noteworthy cast. Peter Strauss, who takes the leading role of Wolff the bounty hunter, was a workmanlike actor with a solid television resume and some previous big screen experience, and Molly Ringwald, whose appearance as Niki the Zone Scav is only her second movie role after Paul Mazursky's Tempest, went on to fame in the John Hughes trilogy of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink. Ernie Hudson and Michael Ironside have supporting roles, and Ivan Reitman was the film's executive producer. 

Regardless, none of that was enough to save the film from mediocrity, and the result is one of those bad movies that isn't quite bad enough to have achieved cult status. 

Part of me says that it must be streaming somewhere, and that I should re-watch the film as part of due geek diligence, but I somehow can't bring myself to invest another 90 minutes of my life on the outside chance that it's not a bad as I remember.

- Sid

* I was honestly a bit surprised to discover that it made back its costs.

"Let's Twist again, like we did last summer."

Mrs. Flood: “Never seen a TARDIS before?”

Doctor Who, The Church on Ruby Road

Okay, so first we have Mrs. Flood, Ruby's TARDIS-aware next door neighbour, breaking the fourth wall in the 2023 Doctor Who Christmas Special.  Then there's actor Susan Twist, who has done one-off cameos in every episode of the new Doctor to date (plus one of the 60th Anniversary David Tennant episodes)*.  And, AND, if that wasn't enough of a slap in the face, there's that musical number at the end of The Devil's Chord featuring the lyric, "There's always a Twist at the end." 

Damn it, one of these women had better be the new Master.

- Sid 

*In case you somehow haven't picked up on this (for example, my wife suffers from face blindness, so it's not impossible), Ms. Twist appeared as Mrs. Merridew with Isaac Newton in Wild Blue Yonder, the third 60th anniversary special; shows up in the flashback audience in The Church on Ruby Road; was Comms Officer Gina Scalzi on the Space Babies space station; a canteen employee who dishes out spendy tea to the Doctor and Ruby at EMI/Abbey Road Studios in The Devil's Chord; the helpful Welsh hiker in 73 Yards; and, hard to miss, the face of the Ambulances in Boom. 

"Ch-ch-changes."

In recent years, the world has experienced significant disruptions—the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Israel and Hamas conflict, extreme climate disasters, the surging cost of living, and global supply chain interruptions.

Predicting the next big upheaval may not be possible, but it is crucial to explore possible disruptions and anticipate potential future scenarios. Even seemingly distant or improbable events and circumstances can suddenly become reality, while overlapping disruptions can lead to compounded societal impacts..

Kristel Van der Elst
Director General, Policy Horizons Canada

Looking for ideas for an apocalyptic near-future novel?  Look no further, the Government of Canada has your back.  

Demonstrating admirable foresight, the federal Policy Horizons department has released a report detailing what they see as the top disruptions in Canada's immediate future. It's a sort of disaster bingo card listing 35 possible crises split into five categories, such as AI running wild, scarcity of vital natural resources, democratic systems breaking down, or an American civil war: and, as with bingo, there's a very real possibility of filling a row by having more than one event occur simultaneously, or for events to domino, one event precipitating another and then another.

It's an interesting little document, which breaks out the various disruptions by likelihood, timeline and impact.  If you're interested, you can read it online at https://horizons.service.canada.ca/en/2024/disruptions/index.shtml#report, or download a PDF version.

The odd thing is that they're all negative, with the possible exception of the development of Northern Canada.  I realize that the document is intentionally biased toward the cautionary, but I'd love to see a companion document - Synergies, perhaps? - with 35 possible changes or developments that would improves lives and make the world a better place. Not that I'm against building shelters against the gathering wind - but you know, windmills are also a good response.

- Sid