Giant Freakin Robot

It’s happened countless times. You’ve got an otherwise great show or movie that’s firing on all cylinders… but there’s this one guy. This one bad apple who nearly spoils the whole bunch, simply by constantly doing stupid things or saying stupid things or hanging around looking at things with his stupid face. We’re not saying Carl from The Walking Dead was like that, but we are saying that if we had an awards show for that sort of thing, it would just be one long montage of Carl dying.

So, we’ve decided to celebrate some of the absolute worst, the characters from science fiction television who constantly made us want to punch a wall, especially if their head was between our fist and said wall. We’ll be measuring them against the accepted international unit of measurement for terribleness, Jar Jar Binks. (For purposes of this article, five Jar Jars is equivalent to going full Jar Jar, meaning you should nuke the site from orbit, because it’s the only way to be sure.)

One last note: we didn’t set out trying to populate this piece with so many kids, but it just sort of worked out that way.

Carl Grimes (The Walking Dead)

For all of its strengths, The Walking Dead can’t ever seem to get over the hill that is “strong character development.” There are likable characters and detestable characters, but Carl Grimes didn’t come from the mind of any mere writer, for he was created from the ashes of the former Tenth Circle of Hell. In Robert Kirkman’s comic series, Carl is a kid who is understandably having trouble coping with his trial-by-error education on survival in a post-apocalyptic world. In the TV show, Carl is a testosterone-free dip who is perpetually mad ’cause Daddy won’t let him hold the gun real close.

Seriously, I’ve been through an appendicitis exam that was less painful than watching this kid formulate ideas that he has an identity that’s worth more to the group than, say, a sock full of dead batteries. I don’t even blame the petulant performances from actor Chandler Riggs, because he’s not the one putting lines in his own mouth. For four seasons, Carl has been his own biggest threat, always finding himself in trouble after some adolescent tirade. He has yet to fuck it all up in Season 5, but as sure as the moon will rise tonight, it’s coming.

How We Would Kill Him Off: Just as he’s about to have sex for the first time, he gets thrown into a giant dumpster, where everyone forgets about him and he starves to death.

While Glen A. Larson’s original Battlestar Galactica may seem a little cheesy when viewed through cynical 21st-century eyes, it still had a helluva lot going for it. That incredible theme composed by Larson and Stu Phillips. There was the effects work by John Dykstra. And there was a foundation built by, among others, concept artist Ralph McQuarrie. With a per-episode budget of a then-unthinkable $1 million or more, Battlestar Galactica hoped to right the wave of excitement kicked up by Star Wars, and so Larson and company had the canny idea to hire McQuarrie to help imagine what the world of BSG would look like. He helped create the look of the ragtag fleet and the Viper starfighters that defended it, but they almost looked very different.

Below is a McQuarrie image showing the Viper BSG fans know and love, a design that was changed very little when it came time for Ronald D. Moore to reboot the series for The Sci-Fi Channel a few years back. It’s sleek shape is perfectly suited for those unforgettable sequences where the Vipers rocket down the Galactica’s launch tubes.

With Dawn of the Planet of the Apes proving that the 2011 Rise was no fluke, it’s clear that all it takes to revive a languishing sci-fi property is the right combination of passion, talent, and vision. (And a decade or so to forget about any terrible Tim Burton versions.) So with Caesar staging a conquest of the box office ($103 million worldwide so far), we here at GFR put our heads together to come up with other 1970s science movies primed for a resurrection. Some of them are cult classics, some of them are forgettable, and some of them are downright lamentable, but they’ve all got at least a small kernel of potential to become something awesome…if they can find the right people to guide them.

Hit the link to see our first pick!

It’s a bit of a slow week for science fiction when it comes to movie theaters and TV airwaves. But there’s one medium that is positively chockablock with sci-fi goodness this week, and that’s the world of comic books. Are you a fan of Doctor Who still talking about the announcement of Peter Capaldi as the twelfth Doctor? Check out the final issue of IDW’s year-long Who series. Each issue has focused on a different Doctor, and it all wraps up with a story involving Matt Smith’s Eleven, and the ongoing story threads that have stretched throughout the series.

On the Star Trek front, the latest issue of the official ongoing Trek series (also from IDW Publishing) continues to explore the rebooted universe created by J.J. Abrams’ 2009 movie and continued in this year’s Star Trek Into Darkness. Supervised by Trek producer/screenwriter Roberto Orci, the latest issue follows up on this year’s tie-in video game, which first introduced the new timeline’s take on the reptilian Gorn. They don’t look like dudes in rubber suits no more.

Over in the world of that other space franchise, Star Wars #8 spins another story set in the period between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes back. Luke and Wedge infiltrate the Empire in a thoroughly unexpected way: by letting themselves get caught. Also, Han and Chewie face off against Boba Fett, without a convenient Sarlacc in sight.