Captain's Log: It's Today — Sixty Years Since "The Man Trap" First Aired
September 8, 1966 to September 8, 2026, exactly sixty years, and the franchise is marking it with a detail almost too poetic to be planned: the Autry Museum in Los Angeles is screening the very first episode back-to-back with this season's Strange New Worlds, on the same screen, the same night. That's the whole thesis of this column in one double feature.
The Best-Reviewed Star Wars Game in Years Furloughed 80% of Its Studio Before Launch
Five days after I called Star Wars: Zero Company's critical reception a rare happy ending for this franchise's gaming track record, the actual story got darker. Up to 80% of developer Bit Reactor's staff were furloughed in the weeks before launch, and a co-founder's ownership lawsuit alleges most employees were furloughed while contractors were simply let go outright.
By the Numbers: Two of the Weekend's Top Eleven Were Reruns — Here's What Old Movies Actually Earn
Cars and Akira took $8.77 million out of theaters over the September 4-6 weekend, nearly 10% of the entire box office, while Lionsgate ran all five Hunger Games films in five nights and reported nothing at all. Let me show you what the re-release math actually looks like -- and why the ticket is really the trailer.
Your Weekend Binge Guide: Four Shows Drop in Four Days, and Only One Is Actually Bingeable
Collision, The Drop, The Paper season 2 and Crew Girl all land between Monday and Thursday — and every one of them uses a different release model. Thirty-nine episodes at telenovela pace, eight weekly, ten at once, and one clean 5h52m binge. Here is the episode math and where your actual free hours should go.
Onslaught Stumbled and Cars Came Roaring Back — And Friday Is About to Reset the Whole Board
Nothing new opens wide until Friday, which makes the week of September 7 a catch-up week: By Any Means, Onslaught and a 20th-anniversary Cars are all still playing from Friday's drop. Then streaming takes over midweek with the Snowfall spinoff, Netflix's Crew Girl and Prime's The Revolutionaries — before September 11 lands Practical Magic 2, Runner and Paul Greengrass's The Uprising on the same day.

Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass Benched Its Own Stars — And Critics Are Furious
The first fully CG Tom and Jerry feature landed in US theaters on September 4 with a Metacritic score of 24. The complaint from Empire, Variety, The Guardian and The Irish Times is not that it is bad — it is that Tom and Jerry are barely in it. Here is what actually happened, and why “legacy character as mascot” is now a business model.
Vader Just Teamed Up With Doctor Doom, and It Actually Makes Sense
Marvel and Lucasfilm just announced Star Wars/Marvel: Hope Assembles, a five-issue crossover written by Kevin Smith that puts Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie alongside the Avengers — with Darth Vader and the Empire teaming up with Doctor Doom on the other side. It's the first true crossover between the two universes, arriving January 2027 for A New Hope's 50th anniversary.
Captain's Log: Strange New Worlds Just Fixed a 37-Year-Old Casting Fight
This week's Strange New Worlds episode let Ethan Peck play both Spock and a twisted double of his half-brother Sybok — quietly answering a casting argument from Star Trek V that Leonard Nimoy lost in 1989. Some ideas just need the right vehicle to finally work.
End of an Era: LEGO Is Finally Retiring the UCS Millennium Falcon
LEGO is retiring ten fan-favorite Star Wars sets by the end of 2026, and the headliner is the one every serious builder has been bracing for: the UCS Millennium Falcon, gone after a nine-year run. It's leaving alongside a Venator cruiser, a UCS TIE Interceptor, Jabba's Sail Barge — and an Andor-based U-Wing that barely made it a year on shelves.
"Really?? Do They?": Michael Shanks Isn't Letting Amazon Forget What It Cancelled
Three months after killing its Stargate revival for lacking "broad appeal," Amazon told the Edinburgh TV Festival it would "welcome any conversations" about picking up Doctor Who. Michael Shanks had exactly four words for that, and they're the most #SaveStargate thing anyone's said all summer.

Captain's Log: Twenty-Five Years Since Broken Bow — Why Enterprise Still Deserved Better
This month marks 25 years since Star Trek: Enterprise premiered on UPN, and the show still gets treated like the franchise's awkward younger sibling. It shouldn't. Revisit the Xindi arc with fresh eyes and you'll find one of Trek's most ambitious, most misunderstood runs.
The Hype Was Justified: Star Wars Zero Company Actually Delivered
Star Wars: Zero Company launched August 27 to the kind of reviews this franchise's games almost never get anymore — 88 on OpenCritic, 91% of critics recommending it, comparisons flying to Rogue One and KOTOR. Four months after I called the pitch 'exactly what we need,' Bit Reactor actually delivered it.
Aboard the Argo: We Finally Know What Amazon's Cancelled Stargate Actually Was
Three months of silence, and it took a hotel ballroom in Birmingham to break it. At Starfury: Ascension 2, Michael Shanks and David Read laid out what the dead Amazon series was actually going to be — a parallel-universe Daniel Jackson, a ship called the Argo, and a version of Stargate that finally sounds like it deserved the fight fans have been putting up for it.
Captain's Log: Sixty Years to the Day — How the Whole Planet Is Celebrating September 8
Star Trek Day lands on its actual 60th anniversary this year, and Paramount isn't treating it like a marketing bullet point — four restored films back in theaters, TOS episodes on the big screen for the first time ever, a Guinness World Record attempt for the Vulcan salute, and a new season for the franchise's youngest audience yet. Here's the full week, laid out.

Captain's Log: Kate Mulgrew on the Weight of Being First — Janeway at 60
In a new 60th-anniversary interview, Kate Mulgrew reflects on what it actually cost and meant to become Star Trek's first female captain — and on the young women in STEM who tell her, decades later, that Janeway is the reason they're in the room. It's worth sitting with what that first season really required of her.
The Man Who Made the AT-AT Walk Just Closed His Studio
Phil Tippett — the stop-motion legend who brought the AT-AT walkers to life in The Empire Strikes Back and animated the Holochess game aboard the Millennium Falcon — just closed the Berkeley studio that bore his name for 35 years. A three-day liquidation auction wrapped August 30, selling off decades of props and models to the highest bidder.

Captain's Log: Holly Hunter Says the Quiet Part Out Loud — "The Definition of Star Trek Is Woke"
In a new interview, Holly Hunter reflects on Starfleet Academy's cancellation, the backlash over its diverse cast, and William Shatner's blunt response to the critics. It's a fight Star Trek has been having with itself since 1968 — and it's worth remembering who won it then.
Rey's Next Chapter Just Vanished From the 2026 Release Calendar
Disney quietly pulled the untitled Rey movie — believed to be Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's New Jedi Order — off its December 18, 2026 release date, with no replacement slot announced. It's the latest stumble for a film that's cycled through three writing teams in eighteen months, and it says a lot about where Rey Skywalker actually sits in Dave Filoni's Lucasfilm right now.
Captain's Log: The Sixty-Year Mission Finally Puts the Whole Crew in One Theater
A new theatrical documentary, "The Sixty-Year Mission: How Star Trek Changed Television and The World," lands in Regal Cinemas October 9 with Shatner, Koenig, Takei, Frakes, Spiner, and more spanning six decades of the franchise. For once, a Trek anniversary project isn't about a new show — it's about the ones who built the ship.
The Force Is Not With Us: Dave Filoni Just Closed the Door on The Hunt for Ben Solo
"Rey Skywalker." Two words closed out the sequel trilogy in 2019 — and at D23 2026, Dave Filoni made sure the door Ben Solo left cracked open stays shut. Between an Ahsoka Season 2 teaser and a full Star Wars: Starfighter reveal, the biggest Star Wars story out of Anaheim was the movie that isn't happening.
Chevron Locked, Off the Books: Michael Shanks Is Building the Stargate Amazon Won't
Daniel Jackson is dialing himself back in. Michael Shanks just announced a full SG-1 rewatch podcast at Comic-Con's #SaveStargate rally — produced by Dial the Gate's David Read — and it's the clearest sign yet that this fandom isn't waiting around for a studio to change its mind.

Celebration 2027: 50 Years, One Galaxy, and a Trip Back to the Beginning
Mark your calendars, because Star Wars Celebration is heading to Los Angeles in April 2027. With a stunning homage to the original 1977 poster, we're not just planning a convention—we're celebrating the golden anniversary of the film that changed everything.

Celebration 2027: 50 Years, One Galaxy, and a Trip Back to the Beginning
Mark your calendars, because Star Wars Celebration is heading to Los Angeles in April 2027. With a stunning homage to the original 1977 poster, we're not just planning a convention—we're celebrating the golden anniversary of the film that changed everything.
The Return to Tython: Why Leia and Rey's Journey in 'Star Wars: Legacy' is a Lore Game-Changer
A new excerpt from the upcoming novel 'Star Wars: Legacy' reveals Rey and Leia traveling to the ancestral home of the Jedi. This isn't just a trip down memory lane—it's a pilgrimage to the very heart of the Force.

50 Years of the Force: From Tunisia's Sands to the Galactic Racer's Finish Line
We're staring down the barrel of the biggest anniversary in cinema history, and Lucasfilm isn't holding back. From a theatrical return of the film that started it all to a high-speed plunge into a new gaming frontier, the galaxy is expanding faster than a Kessel Run in record time.

50 Years of the Force: From Tunisia's Sands to the Galactic Racer's Finish Line
We're staring down the barrel of the biggest anniversary in cinema history, and Lucasfilm isn't holding back. From a theatrical return of the film that started it all to a high-speed plunge into a new gaming frontier, the galaxy is expanding faster than a Kessel Run in record time.

Captain's Log, Stardate 2026.7.11: The Great Convergence at San Diego
As we approach the 60th anniversary of the first voyage of the original Enterprise, Star Trek takes over San Diego Comic-Con to celebrate where we've been and where we're going. From Hall H spectacles to the imminent return of Strange New Worlds, the franchise proves that its vision of the future is more relevant than ever.
