SFX

Star Wars has been with me my entire life – I suspect it has been for many of you, too. Having two younger brothers meant that, between us and our festively tied birthdays, there was an influx of toys each year. I clearly recall the hysteria around R

Les Prince, email I am greatly enjoying the reruns of Space: 1999 [on the Horror Channel] after so many years’ absence. Since it was made more or less on the cusp of the IT explosion, it is fascinating to see how the producers imagined future tech. I

Other cast includes old friends and co-stars Sara Crowe, James Holmes, Wilf Scolding and Fisayo Akinade. A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS, THE BBC tradition which ran throughout the ’70s and has been intermittently revived since 2004, is back for another

Victor Pemberton, one of the original writers of Timeslip, secured the rights in the ‘90s but a relaunch never took off. FIFTY YEARS SINCE ITS DEBUT on ITV, children’s sci-fi series Timeslip is making a comeback, with original stars Cheryl Burfield (

Post-Doctor Who Ace also popped up in kids’ educational show Search Out Science. FOR MANY SHE’S A FAVOURITE companion of “Classic” Doctor Who and arguably she paved the way for “modern” companions like Rose – and now Ace is back alongside the Doctor.

A college football star, Weathers played eight games for the Oakland Raiders. There were a lot of questions and acclimating oneself to the Star Wars universe. The mythology runs so deep. But [director] Dave Filoni is masterful at all those stories an

Gaiman’s book drew on an incident in his father’s life: a lodger stole his car, and then was found dead inside. DESCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR as an exploration of “the disconnect between childhood and adulthood”, Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean At The End Of The L

Tara Strong’s name may not be immediately familiar, but her voice is a staple of many childhood memories. She has worked on countless cult faves including The Powerpuff Girls (as Bubbles), Ben 10 (as Ben), Rugrats (as Dil), Final Fantasy and Batman:

Jérémy Clapin’s earlier shorts include 2008’s Skhizein, about a boy struck by a meteorite. WHEN I LOST MY BODY DEBUTED IN CANNES earlier this year in Critics’ Week, the festival was soon buzzing about the most original animation seen in years. Based

Runaways comic creator Brian K Vaughn wrote seven episodes of Lost. DESPITE AIRING ON SEPARATE NETWORKS in the US, Marvel’s two YA TV shows, Hulu’s Runaways and Freeform’s Cloak & Dagger, are finally set to cross over in season three of Runaways. Thi

A Shyamalan reboot of Tales From The Crypt failed to get off the ground in 2017. IT’S DIFFICULT to go into detail about M Night Shyamalan’s new psychological thriller Servant without dipping into spoiler territory. In a nutshell, the disconcerting Ap

Incoming! also features the Masked Rider, who first appeared in his own, self-titled pulp magazine in 1934. DESCRIBED BY Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort as “the other side of the coin to Marvel Comics #1000 and #1001,” Incoming! looks forward to

THE PROPHECY IS AN ANCIENT ONE. It was told a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, among the barren, sun-beaten dunes of Tatooine. Or at least the southern desert wastes of Tunisia which were doubling for that distant world, as far from the mone

I LOVE THE CHARACTER,” SAYS Daisy Ridley, simply, of her Force-powered alter ego. “All the things that scare her and make her feel vulnerable and tested are all things that she has to face. It’s not like anything is holding her back. She’s terrified,

WHEN STAR WARS HIT IN 1977 IT was a world-changer, commanding headlines, conquering box offices and invading imaginations like a looming Imperial battleship. George Lucas’s cosmic swashbuckler redefined everything from merchandise to the movies thems

TRADITIONAL BEACH HOLIDAYS ARE so passé. We don’t want sand in between our toes anymore – we want dust under our battered leather rebel boots. And for that you’ll have to travel a little bit further than a budget airline will take you. In fact, you m

It is a period of civil war. The New Republic has fallen to the might of the sinister First Order. The last hope for freedom now resides in the beleaguered forces of the Resistance. Luckily, they have some of the best and most dedicated pilots in the

THE LAST TIME WE SAW THE space family Robinson, they were adrift once more, lost in a brand new galaxy. Separated from their friends on the Resolute and without even Will’s mysterious robot BFF to help, the situation looked bleak. Danger, danger inde

“NO. IT’S CATEGORICALLY UNTRUE. It’s 100% grade A… should I say ‘nonsense’, or should I say ‘bullshit’?” SFX is at Roath Lock studios in Cardiff, home of Doctor Who, and the “elephant in the room” question has been posed: is there anything to the per

How does this job compare to previous roles? I remember Chris saying, “It’s going to be a journey, Brad.” I didn’t realise what it was going to be like. I imagined I’d come to work, and it’d be like a normal gig. But it’s a completely different anima

FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE AN ETERNITY, The Expanse ceased to exist. In a startling move, the SyFy Channel axed the futuristic science-fiction drama after its third season in 2018. Devastated viewers protested, gathered signatures for an online petition an

ON OCCASION, SFX GETS TO walk in the footsteps of legends. This time, it’s one that casts no shadow. A sign we spied turning off the road gave us our first shiver down the spine: shaped like a clapperboard, it bore the legend “Bray Studios”. The site

Was it quite daunting to take on this role? • It is iconic, and it’s really walking in some quite big footsteps. So yes, there was that. But what Steven and Mark have written is so their take on it. So you just forget about, “Oh, I have to live up to

OF ALL THE STRANGE places SFX has been in pursuit of a story, summer at the Dancing On Ice studios probably takes the biscuit. Thankfully it’s another frosty production that brings us out to Bovingdon Airfields – also a location for Rogue One and Har

•What I really loved about Steven’s writing was that real detail about the behaviour and psychology. He’s such a beautifully poetic and yet brutal writer at the same time, that I just felt I was made to feel really uncomfortable, but at the same time

WILLOWY FIGURE IN A military long coat and a massively wide-brimmed hat wanders from a sun-dappled country lane into a golden field of gently rippling wheat. The figure bends to peer at a poppy, staring at it wistfully. It’s a moment of bucolic seren

With an impressive list of sci-fantasy credits on his CV (Invasion: Earth, Doctor Who, Jekyll & Hyde, Zapped, Red Dwarf), Howard Burden is more than qualified to bring this new Worzel to life. “Mackenzie wanted Worzel to have found this coat in an ol

I LOVED THE ABSURDITY OF it,” smiles director Dean Parisot, recalling the creation of his 1999 meta classic Galaxy Quest. “The mantra was to make the best Star Trek movie that we could and not wink to the audience. If we made a great adventure film,

Actor LaMonica Garrett is well aware that getting cast as Mar Novu/The Monitor, an extraterrestrial being at the centre of the Arrowverse’s interpretation of DC’s celebrated event Crisis On Infinite Earths, might be his geek peak. A self-professed “D

RELEASED OUT NOW! U | 103 minutes Directors Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck Cast Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, Josh Groban, Sterling K Brown, Evan Rachel Wood There probably are people on planet Earth who haven’t heard the song “Let It Go” yet

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 103 minutes Director Paul Feig Cast Emilia Clarke, Henry Golding, Emma Thompson, Michelle Yeoh Paul Feig aims to bring some Christmas cheer here with a film that’s one-part romantic trifle, one-part social awareness screed and

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 111 minutes Director Hiroyuki Imaishi Cast Billy Kametz, Johnny Yong Bosch, Crispin Freeman, Alyson Leigh Rosenfield A romping action-comedy, this anime is full of shouting, overblown action and silliness for the fun of it. Be

RELEASED TBC DECEMBER 15 | 96 minutes Director Anthony Bueno Cast Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver, Ivan Reitman Having celebrated its 35th anniversary this year and with a second sequel just wrapped, the time is right, it seems, for a fea

RELEASED 6 DECEMBER U | 90 minutes Director Ben Smith Cast Nick Frost, Luke Evans, Gemma Arterton, Bill Nighy There’s a wonderful moment at the start of this kiddie superhero tale which simply reeks of The Twilight Zone. After being fired into space

UK BBC One, finished Also now available on DVD Director Craig Viveiros Cast Eleanor Tomlinson, Rafe Spall, Robert Carlyle, Rupert Graves EPISODES 1.01-1.03 Martian War Machines striding across turn of the century England, laying waste to the Home Cou

UK/US Apple TV+, new episodes every Friday Showrunner Ronald D Moore Cast Wrenn Schmidt, Joel Kinnaman, Sarah Jones, Michael Dorman EPISODE 1.01-1.04 Houston, we have a problem. (Not that we’ve been misquoting that Apollo 13 radio communication for d

US Disney+, streaming now UK Disney+, from 31 March 2020 Showrunner Jon Favreau Cast Pedro Pascal, Nick Nolte, Werner Herzog, Taika Waititi EPISODE 1.01 The Mandaloriandoesn’t have an opening crawl, but if it did it could easily start “Guerre Stallar

UK ITV2, finished US Hulu, streaming now Showrunners William Hartley, Adam Miller Cast Leah Brotherhead, Cara Theobold, Ryan McKen, Hamza Jeetooa EPISODES 1.01-1.06 As zombie survival plans go, stealing a boat and taking off down the Grand Union Cana

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1920 | PG | Blu-ray Directors Paul Wegener, Carl Boese Cast Paul Wegener, Albert Steinruck, Lyda Salmonova BLU-RAY DEBUT Just as a sorcerous word breathes life into the clay-bodied guardian of the Jews, this release reanimates a cen

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | SVOD Director Mati Diop Cast Mame Sane, Amadou Mbow, Ibrahima Traoré, Nicole Sougou NETFLIX Mati Diop broke barriers in May as the first black female director to have a film In Competition at Cannes. But ultimately this

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Gary Dauberman Cast Mckenna Grace, Madison Iseman, Katie Sarife, Patrick Wilson After a couple of duds, the Conjuring franchise gets more-or-less back on track with this Annabelle threequel.

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD Showrunner Alex Kurtzman Cast Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Anson Mount, Michelle Yeoh On one level, season two of Discovery feels like an elaborate plot to extricate the series from the continuity minefi

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 12A | SVOD Director Jérémy Clapin Cast Hakim Faris/Dev Patel, Victoire Du Bois/Alia Shawkat NETFLIX This French animation is an amazingly compelling, poetic and often moving experience. The story alternates between flashbacks

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Jim Jarmusch Cast Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloe Sevigny When it comes to cinema, certain phrases just don’t sound right. “Ken Loach’s new Fast & Furious film” for example, o

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 12 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download Director David Leitch Cast Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby The Fast & Furious movies have been stretching the laws of physics for nearly 20 years. Now, with thi

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1987 | 18 | Blu-ray Director Paul Verhoeven Cast Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith RoboCop’s satirical take on capitalism run amok may feel more prescient than ever, yet it’s first and foremost an ode to ’80s cine

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1944 | PG | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Basil Dearden Cast Mervyn Johns, Glynis Johns, Tom Walls, Françoise Rosay BLU-RAY DEBUT Thought DeadOf Night was Ealing’s only crack at the supernatural? Wrong. This curio sees the British s

RELEASED OUT NOW! 229 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Jane Rogers Publisher Sceptre Jane Rogers flits between the worlds of contemporary and speculative fiction, and she’s done the latter to great acclaim – her 2011 novel The Testament Of Jes

RELEASED OUT NOW! 400 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Christopher Hinz Publisher Angry Robot In his author’s note here, US writer Christopher Hinz reveals how his novel Anachronisms (1988), while it found a publisher, “probably should have been consig

RELEASED OUT NOW! 320 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Rebecca Roanhorse Publisher Century There’s an important question every prequel needs to ask: does the story function in its own right, outside the context of what’s to come? This prelude

RELEASED OUT NOW! 372 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Daniel H Wilson Publisher HarperCollins Michael Crichton’s classic The Andromeda Strain (1969) is often cited as the granddaddy of techno-thrillers. Crichton himself refuted this, but ther

RELEASED OUT NOW! 558 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Justin Lee Anderson Publisher King Lot Publishing Moving on from the comedic style of his debut Carpet Diem, Justin Lee Anderson throws himself headlong into high fantasy with book one of the Eidyn

RELEASED OUT NOW! 176 pages | Hardback Editors Andy Jones, Jeff Conner Publisher Titan Books The future Solar System of The Expanse is such a rich setting that there’s no way this tie-in book should be short of material. While it mostly delivers on t

RELEASED OUT NOW! 464 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Amélie Wen Zhao Publisher HarperVoyager There’s a pleasing mix of cultures in this debut novel from Amélie Wen Zhao, with everything from Russian-style royalty to Asian mysticism. Perhaps

RELEASED OUT NOW! 179 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Eric Saward Publisher BBC Books Finally, all the gaps are plugged; 30 years after Doctor Who disappeared from our screens, the novelisations of the classic series are complete. Former script editor

RELEASED 5 DECEMBER 244 pages | Hardback/ebook Editor Steve Cole Publisher BBC Books The Doctor’s been an inveterate name-dropper for over five decades; this collection of six short stories explores what happens when she’s finally called upon to make

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics Writer Joshua Williamson Artist David Marquez ISSUES 1-3 When you’re bringing together the two best-known heroes in the DC Universe, you’ve got to have someone impressive for them to fight. An intimidating advers

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Marvel Writer Ethan Sachs Artist Luke Ross ISSUES 1-4 Designed to act as a prologue to the events of The Rise Of Skywalker, this four-issue miniseries features all the sequel trilogy’s major players – and does very little

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Soaring Penguin Press Writer David Hine Artist Mark Stafford COLLECTION First published in the Meanwhile… indie comics anthology, this collected edition of David Hine and Mark Stafford’s grotesque haunted house story is de

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics Writers/artists Keith Giffen, Jeff Lemire ISSUES 1-3 Recently DC has been using the mini-series format to take some unexpected departures, and it’s hard to get more unexpected than an out-of-nowhere follow-up to

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Heritage Comics/DC Thomson Writers Grant Morrison, Dave Broadbent Artists Enrique Alcatena, Mike McMahon COLLECTION Reviving the sci-fi digest that was launched in 1979 as DC Thomson’s answer to 2000 AD, this inaugural col

RELEASED OUT NOW! Format reviewed PlayStation 4 Also on Xbox One, PC Publisher EA VIDEOGAME Every Star Wars game ever made has been measured by the sound the player makes when they first get to use a lightsaber. In Jedi: Fallen Order it’s a deeply sa

RELEASED 6 DECEMBER Running Time 58 minutes Format CD/download Publisher Bafflegab Productions AUDIO DRAMA What would Christmas be without an MR James ghost story adaptation? While Mark Gatiss is bringing “Martin’s Close” to TV, his League Of Gentlem

RELEASED OUT NOW! Format reviewed PlayStation 4 Also on Xbox One, PC Publisher Reef Entertainment RELEASED OUT NOW! Format reviewed PlayStation 4 Also on Xbox One, PC Publisher Reef Entertainment VIDEOGAME If you’re expecting a Dark Fate tie-in you’r

RELEASED OUT NOW! Format reviewed PlayStation 4 Publisher Sony VIDEOGAME Most apocalypses are predictable: zombies, asteroid strikes, capitalism. This game at least goes out there and comes up with something new. In this end-of-the-world scenario, th

RELEASED OUT NOW! Format reviewed PlayStation 4 (PSVR only) Also on Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, HTC Vive, HTC Vive Cosmos Publisher PlayStack VIDEOGAME As is the case with far too many videogames, there is, sadly, no sign of Bradley Walsh here; but Jo

WE’VE ALL GOT A CHRISTMAS RITUAL, RIGHT? Whether it’s waking up on the day to a glass of Buck’s Fizz (when you’d never normally drink it), or forcing yourself to endure one of the worst films of all time, Love Actually. Mine requires some planning. D