COMM STATION

With Darren Maxwell

Do you love old science fiction films? If you do and you want to see them on the big screen in Melbourne, there is only one place to go. The Astor Theatre has been screening some absolute gems - not long ago they showed I Married a Monster from Outer Space together with the great This Island Earth. Then came The Braineaters along with Catwomen on the Moon, which was good for a laugh. Then to top it all off they had The Time Machine with Forbidden Planet, and later that same month was the truly groanable Robot Monster with Plan 9 From Outer Space. If you truly enjoy old sci-fi films – both the excellent and the purely awful – you have to give The Astor a look in.

Like me, do you still consider Babylon 5 to be the best science fiction TV show ever made? Target in Melbourne had a big B5 video sale recently. With each tape normally costing $20, they had them at $8.95. With 54 tapes in the series, you could own all of them for under $500 - a real bargain. Myer in Chadstone also had this sale at one point last year, and a Comm Station reader told me that they had already sold two complete sets of the series the night after the sale started.

I recently discovered a video laser disk store having a closing down sale. They too were selling Babylon 5 really cheap, in this case video laser disks, for about $20 - a pretty good discount from the normal $80 marked price… how much?! With normal prices like that, maybe that explains why the store's closing down.

Have you always wanted to know everything about being in a Star Wars fan club? Now you can, with the all-new Australian documentary The Phandom Menace (not to be confused with the American documentary The Fandom Menace), which premiered at the Revolver Lounge bar in Melbourne last year. The producers closely followed the main Australian Star Wars club Star Walking Inc. for 18 months as they prepared for the huge launch of Star Wars The Phantom Menace in 1999, the running of their convention Force III a month or so later, and the aftermath of Phantom Menace fever once the hype had died down. It’s an excellent insight into the lives of Australian Star Wars fans. Check out the website www.thephandommenace.com for more details.

In previous Comm Stations I’ve made mention about one of the hardest sci-fi films to get on video – the Alan Smithee three-hour version of the 1984 film Dune, and my satisfaction at finally being able to get a TV copy of this infamous version. After 16 years, the version of Dune that some people believed didn’t actually exist can now be bought on both DVD and video, with the title "the three hour TV version of Dune". Now that the film is up for grabs in just about any video store, this marks a rather disappointing ending to what I thought was the greatest video chase story of all time. But at least now more than a couple of people in Australia can actually see it!

When it comes to commitment for a labour of love, you can’t go past the guy responsible for the “Completely Unauthorised Star Wars Encyclopaedia” which be found on the Internet at www.theforce.net/swenc/. Once downloaded, this Word 97 file version unzips to a massive 15Mb in size, equating to 2,089 pages of text and over 1,500,000 words. Definitely not the kind of thing you want to print out on a home printer (or any printer for that matter). As for content, it covers the “expanded” Star Wars universe from every possible angle using every possible known resource. Despite a number of basic spelling mistakes, it is a very impressive reference.

It seems some people just don't want to learn from science fiction films. I received a letter from Qantas recently, advertising their latest Qantas Club lounge computer networking system, and what did they call it? Skynet! "No, not Skynet! Not the one that decides humanity's fate in a micro second and is responsible for the creation of the Terminator!" Hmmm, I wonder if there's a Miles Dyson working at Qantas, now THAT would be freaky.

Star Wars collecting these days is definitely for people with the money. I noticed in a Toys 'R' Us store that they've released the celebratory 100^th issue large figure. Have you any idea how much some of these large figure sets cost? I've seen two packs of Rebel pilots selling for $250, four packs of Imperial troops selling for $400, and now they've released a 100^th issue figure. I don't even want to imagine how much it would have cost to purchase the other 99.

Sci fi car number plates have been appearing everywhere recently. Spotted by someone on the old Fanforce.net Internet messaging boards was ANAKIN. I also saw the Star Wars inspired number plate SITHLD (Sith Lord) and heard about two other Star Wars inspired plates: DARTH and JEDI 89. A great one for Star Trek fans that has been noted was TREKKY. I mentioned last issue that the Star Trek number plate BEMEUP had been spotted: I saw the plate BMEYUP not too long ago. And I have been told about a nice little number plate KATRA 1, which refers to Spock’s “soul” in the film The Search for Spock.

Remember when I reported seeing PPG, in reference to the handguns used in Babylon 5? This time I saw PPG 1. It may not relate to Babylon 5 per se, but hey, the reference to the show is still there! A nice homage to a fantasy film was the number plate ZANADU (the correct spelling would begin with an "X"). And finally, I spotted a really nice number plate for the Ray Harryhausen fans: ARGOS, which is the city featured in Jason and the Argonauts.