Step lively, Rocketeers! Time to show how keen Earthlings can be!

Space! It is, mostly, but between the stardust and dead satellites lies adventure for those brave, well-groomed few who don the velour of the Rocket Patrol. Space also contains Cadets. Who go on Missions. Away. Space Cadets: Away Missions promises adventure and thrills in the wide, black yonder for you and your chums, but does it provide derring-do, or a herring, red? Smoke me a kipper, skipper, and I’ll tell you.

A fresh, pleasant morning in the Rocket Patrol: everything shipshape!

Space Cadets: Away Missions has little besides theme to tie it to previous Space Cadets games, and is a love letter to old-timey pulp sci-fi. Players cooperate to challenge an alien menace in all its forms, from squishy to chitinous, and ultimately save the day! The components offer a pleasing toybox of plastic figures, and clear, if a little dull, counters and board tiles, with a rulebook and reference sheets that are complete and concise.

Set up one of 16 scenarios, move heroes, roll dice, get stuff, move the monsters – on the surface level, SC:AM is a pale dot in the firmament of dice-and-miniatures titles, but by strictly limiting the fussiness of action points, status effects, dice modifiers, and random events SC:AM enables players to focus on decision making, and enjoying the bloody game. The design clarity and attention to detail is evident from the paired dice colours (you most commonly roll multiple pairs of dice for Saucerman attacks) to the airtight logic of the “AI” pathfinding. Everything is there to keep the situation clear and bring gameplay to the fore. It’s a testament to the design that SC:AM smoothly puppeteers no less than seven different rubber-suit aliens, each with their own behaviour, without taking longer than the players’ turn to do it.

A short while later: “Good job, crew! I’m right behind you!”

The result is an engaging, fun cooperative puzzle, in which dice luck never feels like it’s commanding the bridge, but affectionately chatting to the engines down in engineering. There are extrastellar threats and brave heroics, melon-headed Saucermen and brains-in-jars, jail-breaks, Hive Queens, and the Tunnel of Terror, all of it presented neatly and shipshape, as befits a true Rocketeer. Curiously, while the game plays with up to six, I’ve had the most enjoyment using four characters in my solitaire games, where the order of activations, and timing of abilities really shines. Like many cooperative games, there’s only the players themselves to limit a single person calling all the shots, and with no hands of cards, nor other hidden elements, SC:AM risks an emergent Game Commander. If everyone is on the same page, however, it is unforgettable fun to yank the tinfoil hat from a mind-enslaved human Thrall, wire it up to a chunk of Mysterium, and teleport to safety – just like in the movies!

In 2005, Edgar Wright made his feature film debut with Shaun of the Dead, a self-proclaimed “Zombie-Rom-Com” penned by himself and Simon Pegg, starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. It simultaneously parodied and paid tribute to the Zombie genre while being a pretty kick-ass Zombie flick in itself. It became an instant classic.

Hey look, they’re fighting Zombies in a pub!

Two years later, Wright, Pegg, and Frost took on the buddy cop genre in Hot Fuzz. It also became a cult classic. This is my personal favorite of the two.

Hey, they’re fighting baddies in another pub! What are the odds?

Their next film, The World’s End, was teased as the final entry in what has been dubbed by Wright as the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy, otherwise known as the Cornetto Trilogy, due to the use of different flavor Cornetto ice cream cones in both films (Drum Sticks are the American equivalent).

Shaun of the Dead had Strawberry,

Red label for Zombie blood

Hot Fuzz had Classic,

Blue label for Cop uniforms

And presumably The World’s End will have Mint.

Green label for… Minty fresh Alien breath?

And now, 6 years after Fuzz, we have our first peek!

Five friends (Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Eddie Marsan), at Pegg’s insistence, reluctantly attempt to recreate a pub crawl they failed to complete in their youth, which ends at the ominously named “The World’s End” pub.

Yes, one is called “The Famous Cock”

As the night goes on, they start to realize there’s something amiss with the people of the town. Namely that they are all NIGHTMARE FUEL.

“Sir, can I borrow a ligh-HOLY SHIT, AHHHHHH!!!”

First off, I love the casting. Simon Pegg looks quite different from his usual role; he pulls off a punk look, and gets to play the fool.

I tried to find a straight-faced Pegg in this trailer, but I honestly couldn’t.

Pegg’s character seems to be stuck in the past while his old buddies have moved on to more mature, professional lives. It will be interesting to see how his character arc will contrast with the sci-fi nature of the rest of the movie.

We also get Nick Frost, who looks good as ever.

Every time I see Frost in a new part, he inhabits it in a way that is different from his previous roles. Yes, he is almost always the clumsy oaf in some respect, but his characters seem to have range. From a soldier in the Territorial Army, to a down-and-out loser, to a somewhat reluctant cop, he always brings his A game. I cannot wait to see what he does in this film.

Pegg in the back, not giving a single shit.

Oh by the way, in the shot following the above pick, Frost STARTS PUNCHING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE USING BAR STOOLS AS FISTS.

HELL. YES.

After a cameo in Shaun, and speaking role at the beginning and end of Hot Fuzz, it’s great to see Martin Freeman as a full character in this film.

You rock that BlueTooth, Martin!

Paddy Considine is also in this film, whom you may recognize as one of the Andys from Hot Fuzz. Glad to see he makes a return!

DAMN, he cleans up good!

I have to admit, I don’t know much about Eddie Marsan, but I do know I have seen him in other movies. At any rate, I’m sure he’ll be hilarious.

“No, I do not want to get ‘shit faced’.”

And all have good flashback doubles. They manage to resemble their mature adult counterparts whilst looking like they’re out to get stone drunk.

Of course the last of the trilogy wouldn’t be complete without a fence jump!

So without further ado, here’s the complete Blood and Ice Cream Fence Jump compilation!

We aren’t explicitly told what’s going on in this teaser (okay, we kind of are), but I’m going to call it: it’s aliens. Need proof? Here’s a still for ya:

E. T. phone home ON YOUR ASS!

There’s also multiple electric explosions.

What happens when you mix Mentos and Jager bombs.

And what looks like extra terrestrial blood on Simon Pegg’s face.

I’m perfectly okay with aliens! Zombie, Buddy Cop, and Sci-fi make for a really good action flick triple feature! I would pay money to see these three films shown back-to-back-to-back in a theater in an afternoon. I’m really hoping AMC, Alamo Draft House, and/or others will do just that for this film’s release. If not, I’m going to watch Shaun and Fuzz of my own accord right before seeing The World’s End, and I encourage you to do the same! Come on, let’s get annihilated!

I leave you with this awesome pic of Simon Pegg flipping a double bird.

It may be based an old idea, but ‘V’ is the best new science fiction show I’ve seen since Stargate Universe. Maybe it’s my lady-crush on the lovely (and in this case horrifying) Morena Baccarin of ‘Firefly’ fame, but mostly it’s just great television. If you haven’t had the chance to catch an episode of ‘V’, which has just wrapped up it’s second season, you are missing out. So what’s the deal with ‘V’?

Visitors have arrived on earth, professing to be of peace and bearing gifts of advanced medicine and technology. It all seems too good to be true, and it is. The visitors want something from us, and it is up to FBI Agent Erica Evans (played by the ever-talented Elizabeth Mitchell, best known for her role as Dr. Juliet Burke on Lost) to figure out what the V’s want with humanity…and with her son, Tyler. As it turns out, they want everything. But it’s a little bit more complicated than just a mere invasion…

Unfortunately, like most good sci-fi that makes its way onto prime time tv, ‘V’ is in danger of not being renewed for a third season. Though the first season did do better than the second in terms of ratings, ‘V’ has always attracted at least 5 million viewers per episode. The second season of ‘V’ was cut down by ABC to only ten episodes after an original order of thirteen episodes,  further adding to the feeling I have that ABC will not allow this show to last much longer.

Hopefully ‘V’ will be renewed for a third season, as producer Scott Rosenbaum promised in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly that the best is yet to come in season three. For those currently watching the show, it is clear that Erica will be mighty upset when she realizes what has happened on the New York mothership during the season two finale. Season three of ‘V’ promises to deliver the all-out conflict that we have been waiting for since the show began, which would make it even more tragic if this show were to be cancelled now.