Ostensibly, Moon is a movie about a man named Sam, the sole employee of a lunar mining outpost, drudging his way through the last two weeks of his three-year contract, and the way things begin to go wrong for him as his termination date approaches.

Which is true, but that’s like saying 2001: A Space Odyssey is a movie about a cranky computer.

The movie slyly opens with a standard slice-of-life of Sam’s automated, lonely existence, as a sense of disaster begins to seep into the cracks like grime into his exposure suit. The cheerful computer, GERTY (complete with emoticon interface), grows sinister; Sam begins to see flashes of other people on the station; there are no outside communications. The stage is set for the slow burn of hallucinatory nothings, the at-last reveal that Sam is not alone, his showdown with the ruthless computer mind—you know where this is going.

Except it doesn’t.

While taking a rover trip out to retrieve a case of Helium-3 (the sustainably energy source Lunar Industries is harvesting), Sam gets into an accident. Later, Sam wakes up in the infirmary, unable to remember what’s happened. When Sam makes an unauthorized trip out to the wrecked rover, he figures out why he doesn’t remember his accident—the Sam Bell who crashed is still in the wreckage.

In constructing the script, Duncan Jones masterfully avoids the usual “He’s right behind you!” sci-fi scare tactics. Nothing jumps out from around a corner—nothing has to, when the corporation’s insidious tactics are clear to us from the start (though not, at first, to the Sams). The two Sams don’t waste any time denying the other’s existence; they circle each other for a little while before settling into an uneasy truce and fighting over ping-pong. (“Old” Sam is better, though his palpable desperation for company keeps him from gloating too much.)

Sam Rockwell delivers two seamless and unique performances, constructing “old” Sam as the easygoing blue-collar drone baffled by what’s happened, and “new” Sam as the sharper, more capable astronaut determined to get out of their hopeless situation. Without any debate about whether they’re less human because they’re clones, they present two people who just happen to be clones of one another, and let the audience realize how different they are when the men’s timeline shrinks and they start making decisions about who stays, and who makes a run for it.

Even in the details—the music on Sam’s alarm clock; GERTY’s reactions that hint that Sam’s is not the only awakening; the music cues that turn potentially horrific moments into tragic ones—the movie works deftly, weaving three fully-realized characters into a situation that feels just familiar enough without resorting to stock, and delivering a quiet, mature story whose implications linger after the credits have rolled.

Moon is cerebral science fiction at its best; see it if you can.

[This piece originally appeared on Tor.com.]

On Tor.com today, I break down Brotherhood, the first of the back seven episodes that NBC is burning off.

There were some absolutely gorgeous moments this episode. They are really not messing around with the cinematography, or the score, both of which were movie-quality. Plus, I’m a total sucker for some symbolism. MORE CANDLES.

However, it seems like in the backlash of the “too little happening” complaints in the first few episodes, they’re now offering single-episode plot arcs, which is fine if you want to rid your city of a plague in twelve hours, but a little underinflated when you’re trying to establish the terror of a traitor within the King’s own circle.

The good news is that David and the king’s son are finally, FINALLY not at polar opposites any more, and while I have no illusions about Jack’s ability to fuck up almost anything he touches, at least his psychotic ADD attempts at obsessiveness are pointing in a Biblical direction, if you get me, and I think you do.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: this should have been on HBO. It has no place on a major network, which NBC figured out about three episodes too late.

Cast notes.

1. Uh, Thomasina? You out sick? Thomasina?

2. Oh, Wed Studi.

I have come to accept that The Secret of Moonacre, about whose costumes I have already written much, will never see release in the States because of magical reasons of which I am unaware but probably involve dragons and things. So, I will have to make up this damn movie myself. Luckily, the best website in the world The Costumer’s Guide, had a link to some new costume stills, so like photos of a crime scene, I can use these to piece together what’s happened.

P.S. From these pictures, what happened is not good.

Oh, you can run, young heroine, but you can’t hide.

Funny you mention a crime scene…
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So, I saw the new Star Trek movie. I wasn’t going to (J.J. Abrams is not what I would call a draw), but people loved it! People insisted! People told me it would be amazing!

All those people were high!

Talk about amok time, damn.

Okay, first blame first:

The writing. Flat, obvious, and more holes than a block of Swiss.

Absolute old-boy’s-club colonialism. Women exist to give birth or to make themselves available for men’s comfort. Thoughtless, ridiculous cockheads are recruited from bar fights they are losing badly because someone recognized that their dad accidentally got put in charge of a spaceship for twelve minutes that one time. Cadets fill up the flagships because the entire fleet is busy in another system (really, J.J.? The entire fleet? I mean, it’s certainly some ambitious handwaving, but come on).

A Romulan ship has come back from the future to make Spock sad. (The man in charge of the world’s spiniest ship decides not to save his own planet but instead blows up Vulcan.) Nobody really cares except Spock, and he only cares because his cameo-appearance mom died. Luckily, his human half wins out just in time for him to accept humanity as the only way to survive, which would be a totally racist philosophy if anyone was paying attention.

Also, that kid who got flunked from the Academy for cheating and broke laws to get on board because he was pissy about staying home gets to be the flagship captain forever.

The “big twist.” Ten seconds into the movie, Abrams decides he is already tired of recreating the original series and turns it into an alternate universe (his favorite!) by blowing up Kirk’s dad. This turns Kirk into an even more useless douche than normal. It also means that the villain has to hang around for 25 years picking his teeth with one of the prongs in his ship before he comes around to menace our hero again.

Our hero in this case is Spock, which would be an interesting twist except Kirk keeps photobombing the frame and running away with the plot, so forget that. Basically, when Vulcan explodes (spoiler!), Spock gets to emo around about his mom while Kirk does all the charge-taking. Now J.J. has made a huge AU high-school fanfic where he can do just as he pleases! Well done, J.J.

I mean, for real?

The aesthetics. You can try to explain to me why a backwoods mining vessel would have reason to look like a spiny sea anemone. You will not succeed.

Oh, and here’s a drawing I made of the new Enterprise, based on how the ship is presented in the film.

That is all.

The bridge. The first time I saw the bridge, I thought, “There are way too many people in this shot.” Then I realized that it was for the best, since they needed the coverage: that movie was 40% “people leaving the bridge when they’re not supposed to.” I mean, fewer people left the TITANIC than left that bridge.

The ladies. You can explain to me how we only rate four ladies in this movie:
- mom who gives birth and then goes “offworld” so her son can rebel
- mom who is quietly supportive and then dies so her son can rebel
- skanky chick who sleeps with Kirk so he can be in the room for an important piece of exposition
- Uhura, who sleeps with an Academy teacher and then spends the rest of the movie with her face turned towards him at all times like she’s a fucking sunflower.

You will not succeed.

The performances. Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, John Cho, Bruce Greenwood – job well done. You may go home. The rest of you better be in acting bootcamp this second.

Its success as Trek. They used the same character names and costumes as the TV show. That’s…about it. (Fun fact about the bridge crew from TOS: a Russian, an Asian, and an African-American were groundbreaking IN THE SIXTIES. The fact that we have apparently not come any farther is just sad. Also, playing a character’s accent for laughs is sort of uncool in this day and age, I thought, but what do I know?)

Also there are Vulcans. For forty-five minutes.

I actually think the lack of thematic connection (not even talking about canon) to any existing Trek was intentional – aside from the minimal fan service, this movie was clearly made to attract people who would never otherwise have stooped to such a geek level. Mission accomplished! Lensflare!

Its success as a reboot. Well, I’ll say this much: now that J.J. has jettisoned all that canon, nobody even has to worry about watching that geeky TV show any more.* Well done, J.J.!

* Except for the people who are walking out of the theatre like, “Man, Kirk and Spock were really giving each other the eye!” and want to check out that hoyay for a while.**

** There is a squad of middle-aged women with back rooms full of mimeographed Kirk/Spock ‘zines who are going to strangle you in your sleep. Have fun with that!

So, you’ve used up the rest of your vacation time for the year going to see Star Trek in the middle of weekdays so you could get a decent seat. Don’t worry: it happens to the best of us. But while you’re stuck at home waiting, turn off that Countdown to the Special Edition DVD desktop widget and check out some movies that tackled science fiction just as well as the new Trek (and often better).

1. Contact

You want to classify prime numbers now?

This is how interstellar travel begins: not with a bang, but a committee. Contact (adapted from the Carl Sagan bestseller), goes into the nuts and bolts of space travel when an interstellar communiqué gets caught in a web of red tape. Though it lacks the astronomy-candy of the novel, the movie paints a picture of a near future where religious conservatism, economic trouble, and political turmoil conspire to prevent scientific exploration. So close to life it’s hardly science fiction.

2. Solaris

There are no answers, only choices.

Proving it’s possible to set a movie in a spaceship and not blow up everything in sight, this adaptation of the Stanislaw Lem novel is a drama about an encounter with the truly alien. When psychologist Chris Kelvin travels to a spaceship orbiting oceanic Solaris, his dead wife appears in bed beside him, with no memory of having been gone. The struggle between the crew members (and between the ideals of morality and happiness) is compelling—though George Clooney struggles to carry it off. Caveat viewer.

3. Event Horizon

I thought it said “Liberate me”—save me. But it’s not.  It’s “Liberate tutame”—save yourself.

You think space is scary when you’re ejecting your warp core to avoid being sucked into a black hole? Try a ship that’s come out of a black hole and brought an alien with it—an alien out to break down the rescue crew, one mind at a time. The typical horror tropes ensue (never go anywhere alone, what is wrong with you?), but the idea that the truly alien is more terrifying than humans can handle is enough to make you think twice about exploring strange new worlds.

4. Buck Rogers

And you are the men I made counsellors of Earth? I would be better served by this Buck Rogers who walked through your men as if they were children.

Laser-gun-toting Buck Rogers and his loyal underage sidekick enlisted the people of Saturn to rebel against a tyrannical Earth in this serialized movie based on the uber-popular short stories and comics about space’s first badass. (Fact about Buck Rogers: Buck Rogers does not dive in freefall towards the Romulan mining platform. The Romulan mining platform dives in freefall towards Buck Rogers.)

5. Starship Troopers

Every day, Federal scientists are looking for new ways to kill bugs.

A dark-side-of-Trek look at the camaraderie within a soldiering space force, Starship Troopers takes a liberal dose of World War II-era propaganda wars and points it at a colonial army of chiseled young no-talents out to rid the solar system of the insectoid aliens they’ve been told threaten Earth’s existence. Bonus: this movie used more ammo than any movie before it, which is good for those who enjoy a bit of the old ultraviolence.

6. Voyage to the Moon

[piano playing]

Bad news: it’s a silent movie. Good news: it’s the first science fiction movie ever made (in 1902, pretty much any movie was a first), and is full of inspiring imagery—literally, since many other filmmakers of the era were directly influenced by director Georges Méliès’ use of special effects. Its tale of scientists who battle moon monsters was so good that Edison pirated it and made it famous. (Which is good news for everyone but Méliès.)

Extra-good news: it’s only eight minutes long, so it’s not going to take a huge chunk out of your day.

7. Pitch Black

Would you die for them?

This movie launched Vin Diesel’s career. However, if you can forgive that, this hardscrabble adventure is well worth a look. Made on a shoestring budget, the movie follows a motley crew whose space transport crashes on a planet where monsters come out at night—and they’re on the verge of an eclipse. The survivors struggle to restart the ship in time to avoid a grisly demise, including convicted murderer Riddick, who’s been modified to see in the dark and deliver all his lines in a gravelly monotone. (Bonus: in this movie, the leading lady gets a character arc of her own!)

8. Gattaca

That piece can only be played with twelve.

An underrated gem, Gattaca tackles the ethics of genetic modification and the aesthetics of a world so sterile that the presence of an eyelash is enough to get you convicted of a crime. Deliberately paced, the movie still manages to make use of every scene; with lived-in dialogue and casual world-building, it’s cerebral science fiction with a streak of dry humor. Plus, Ethan Hawke and Jude Law have the sort of antagonistic male friendship a thousand Kirk/Spock slash fics were made of.

9. Moon

Two weeks, two weeks, two weeks…

It’s not even out yet (release date: June 12), but this Sam Rockwell drama about a man on a lunar mining facility losing his mind (or not) promises to be interesting for at least the first hour. With the always-quality Sam Rockwell at its center and top-notch effects guys painting the moon’s ghostly palette, the buzz is strong enough that it’s worth getting tickets for this tale of a man stranded where, uh, three men have gone before.

10. Ultraviolet

Please remove all articles of clothing and proceed into the scanner.

I mean, if you’re going to watch two hours of inexplicable plotting punctuated by lengthy prologues, hyper-edited fight scenes, and lens flares, at least renting this is less expensive than a movie ticket.

[This piece originally appeared at Tor.com.]