Oh man, folks, do we ever have a doozy today. The folks out at A&E sent out a copy of Robotech: The Complete Series, and if you have even the vaguest interest in animation, especially of the Japanese variety, then you’ll definitely want to get in on this.

Robotech: The Complete Series is pretty much what it says on the box, nearly thirty four hours of Robotech, from the First Robotech War to the Third Robotech War and including the Robotech Archives. Things all get started when humanity finds itself in possession of an alien space fortress that has mysteriously crash-landed on the planet. Themselves in the midst of a world war, humanity decides to shut down its various wars and band together to figure out just what the hell it is that crashed on the planet in the first place, and what it may represent. You’ll get to watch humanity take on the Zentraedi, and then fend off the Robotech Masters, and then the Invid will get involved. And, after all that, you’ll get a whole load of behind the scenes footage and the like–a whole disc’s worth, in fact–just to cap the whole experience off.

Naturally, as you’d expect from something as extensive and all-inclusive as this, some of it will be better than others. And indeed, some parts will lag a bit while other parts will be packed with more action than you ever thought a cartoon from the eighties (and beyond) could offer up. But for the most part, the action will be relatively dense. It’s pretty hard to get bored while watching Robotech, if for no other reason than something is constantly shooting at someone else, occasionally interrupted by something else blowing up.

And you might think this is simplistic, and you’d have good reason to think so, but this is actually a whole lot more complex than you might think. After all, we’re talking about a series that covers almost a full day and a half of footage, so you know there’s a lot going on in here. It’s a fine piece of anime, and nicely representative of the genre. If you want a good look at where anime came from–and where anime might well go from here–then you’ll want to settle in with this massive chunk of Robotech.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Robotech: The Complete Series a full ten out of ten. There’s more than enough action to keep most anyone satisfied, and as a history lesson, it represents a major achievement in anime and is well worth your time to watch.

You remember the last season of Doctor Who? Man, that was great stuff, wasn’t it? Well, things are only going to get better–and weirder–thanks to the return of everyone’s favorite Gallifrey survivor. The folks out at the BBC sent over a copy of Doctor Who, Series Six Part One, for us to review, and once again, you’re going to have a bang up time here if you’re anywhere near interested in science fiction.

Doctor Who, Series Six Part One, once again joins up with the last of the Time Lords and his assorted cohorts. And he’s got plenty to do, too–he’ll be interfering in Earth’s history all over the place, and then, once he’s done that (seriously, by the end of the first episode, he’ll die, or almost die, a couple times, then take on an alien invasion of the strangest sort of aliens I’ve seen in some time–even by the end of the first episode. And then, it carries on from there.

And that’s the amazing thing about Doctor Who in general, and this season in particular–there is a lot going on here. I mean a lot. A lot of a lot, even. Some of it is disturbing, some of it is hilarious, but what it almost never is is boring. This is incredibly taut and well put together science fiction, and it’s intermingling suspense and horror and drama and even comedy with terrific aplomb. You can say what you will, but the last man of Gallifrey will keep your interest at every stretch.

Of course, you’ve got to be something of a science fiction buff to get much out of this, but rest assured that if you do have a fondness for science fiction, you’re going to absolutely love this. It’s some of the most complex science fiction out there, and probably some of the best.

It’s full of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, which doesn’t often lend itself well to being coherent and making sense, but this will often make much more sense by the end than it did at the beginning. And that’s an absolute delight.

The Screenhead Ten Scale can’t do anything but the obvious and hands Doctor Who, Series Six Part One, a full ten out of ten. Here’s hoping that Part Two will be anywhere near as good as Part One was. This is a magnificent piece of science fiction that will absolutely entrance its viewers, and you should be one of them.

The universe is about to get a little smaller with the final season of Stargate Universe, and you’ll likely enjoy the ride, even if you may not like where it ends up. The folks out at Fox sent over a copy of the five-disc set of Stargate: Universe, and this is going to be a big one.

Stargate: Universe takes us out to the Destiny, a massive ship that’s built with on-board Stargates. Several ships were sent out ahead of it, to seed several worlds with Stargates ahead of its arrival, thus allowing the ship to freely move from point to point via Stargate travel. And now, it’s just been seized by the show’s main baddies, the Lucian Alliance. Now, with the ship being evacuated in rapid fashion, and its human crew now looking for a way to get home, they’ll have to pull together and find a way to survive.

The interesting thing about Stargate: Universe The Complete Final Season is that it’s geared for both longtime Stargate fans as well as those who may not have any more background than the movie. And it does do a pretty passable job of putting up a science fiction epic, though it’s not hard to see why people were comparing this–and often unfavorably, to boot–to the newest installments of Battlestar Galactica. After all, on the surface, it’s pretty similar. Big ship flying around, humans who just want to get home, and so on.

They’ll do a little hopping around here, timestream-wise, with a few flashbacks tossed into the mix, and plenty of action, too. The plot is a little on the garbled side, but it’s still got a lot of exciting elements to it, and that’s better than a lot of shows will provide, especially lately.

The down side here, though, is the ending. Frankly, the ending is catastrophic. It’s a cliffhanger, and worse yet, a guaranteed (at this point) unresolved cliffhanger, so watching this will be an exercise in futility as it will not end.

Still though, it’s entertaining by itself, better in some spots than in others, but that’s how it will always be with any television series box set. And if you don’t mind a whole lot ambiguity in your endings, then you’ll be just fine.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Stargate Universe a seven out of ten for doing the best it could with what it had to work with. It’s not the best end to a long running franchise like Stargate, but, well, it tried. So it won’t be the best, but it will be worth the watch.

Will Smith, son Jaden and M. Night Shyamalan working together is an interesting and possibly a very smart collaboration for all concerned. All three will be working together in Columbia Pictures’ untitled science fiction movie. Shyamalan will direct, which he wrote the script with Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli).

Variety reports the Shyamalan-Smith partnership covers quite a bit. The actor and director will produce, along with James Lassiter, Jada Pinkett Smith and Ken Stovitz via Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment shingle. Boy! That was a mouth full.

Though the details about the project are sparse, I have heard the story takes place 1,000 years in the future and tells the tale of a young boy and his estranged father who explore a vacant Earth after their ship crashes. It’s uncertain whether the film will have Shyamalan’s signature twist, though Sony described the movie as “sometimes scary.”

If you know anything about Will Smith’s career, you know he likes to take chances with new directors. Teaming up with Shyamlan is a different approach that may prove bankable for both.

“The chance to make a scary, science-fiction film starring Jaden and Will is my dream project,” Shyamalan told Variety.

The Shyamlan’s dream project is still in its infancy, and I look forward to hearing more about the production as it evolves into a major motion picture.

TNT has released a new trailer for the Falling Skies. I am eagerly anticipating this series. I can’t believe how much new action and details are being shown in the footage and interviews with stars Noah Wyle (ER, TNT’s The Librarian movies), Moon Bloodgood (Terminator Salvation) and Drew Roy (Secretariat).

The series launch is still months away, but I am excited. The trailer shows us the aliens and how evil they look, yikes. Which brings me the question: This must be science-fiction horror? The series is set to launch a two-hour premiere Sunday, June 19, 2011 at 9 p.m. (ET/PT), before moving into its regular timeslot of Sundays at 10 p.m. (ET/PT).

Brought to us by the ever so talented executive producer Steven Spielberg, Falling Skies opens in the chaotic aftermath of an alien attack that has left most of the world completely incapacitated. The few remaining survivors have banded together outside major cities to begin the difficult task of fighting back. Each day is a test of survival as citizen soldiers engage in an insurgency campaign against the occupying alien force, whose nature and purpose remains a mystery. Falling Skies is a tale of endurance, commitment and courage in which everyday people are called upon to become heroes. The survivors may be outmatched, outnumbered and outgunned, but nothing can beat the human spirit. The series combines stunning visual effects and personal human stories about triumph and survival in the most devastating circumstances.

After seeing this trailer, I am excited about Super 8. The movie is written and directed by J.J. Abrams with bulk of the cast under eighteen, which means my daughter can see it. After all, it carries Spielberg’s Amblin logo.

The movie is billed a an upcoming science fiction film starring Elle Fanning, Amanda Michalka, Joel Courtney, Gabriel Basso, Noah Emmerich, Ron Eldard, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Zach Mills and Kyle Chandler, due to be released on June 10, 2011 in both conventional and IMAX theatres.

In the summer of 1979, a group of friends in a small Ohio town witness a catastrophic train crash while making a super 8 movie and soon suspect that it was not an accident. Shortly after, unusual disappearances and inexplicable events begin to take place in town, and the local Deputy tries to uncover the truth — something more terrifying than any of them could have imagined.

Ah, the growing trend of turning everything into Twilight. We’ve got Red Riding Hood coming up looking to bring out Twilight with more werewolves, and some are already calling I Am Number Four the Twilight of alien invasion movies. They’re not too far wrong, sadly, though this is a bit more entertaining than Twilight, but only just a bit.

I Am Number Four follows the Loriens, who have, in the grandest Kryptonian fashion, sent nine of their young folks off to Earth to be raised by Protectors. The displaced Loriens are a powerful set of kids, with all sorts of bizarre superpowers, but as is generally the case with this sort of thing, it takes training to use them properly. The displaced Loriens also have a bigger problem on their hands, the psychopathic Mogadorians, who apparently managed to put paid to everyone on Lorien, but will somehow be killed by nine kids with superpowers. This is the first of many such plotholes. Anyway, the kids are rapidly being killed off by Mogadorians, and the first three are already down. Now, they’re on their way to take out Number Four, who’s been moving around the United States for years under a variety of names. And he’ll have to survive the Mogadorian onslaught long enough to learn how to use his powers and find the rest of the kids to have any shot of taking down the Mogadorians.

Seriously, I could go down a list of plotholes this movie’s packing. Like how a small town in Ohio, where Number Four spends most of the movie, has sufficient wealth to make both a camera store and guitar shop viable businesses but not sufficient to host a community college. Or how Number Six, who Number Four will encounter later in the movie, knows so much about her planet while Number Four spends most of the movie surprised by LITERALLY EVERYTHING. It goes on like this.

Now, this was actually a book to start with, apparently, so maybe some things have been lost in translation, like pretty much every Harry Potter fan will huffily point out every time I mention a plot hole in the movies. But still–a movie should not come with required reading just to get anywhere with the plot. A movie needs to be self-contained, with maybe some points left open for sequels (as this one so clearly did). Worse, it took almost an hour for I Am Number Four to start getting interesting, and much of the last few minutes was a terrific rolling fight scene but even here they didn’t take long to start setting up that sequel, which is inevitable, because we’ve got all sorts of unanswered questions in here.

Still though, it’s not bad–it’s certainly not the reprehensible train wreck that Twilight was–and will prove at least watchable. Though if you take a pass on this one until it hits on video and the sequel comes out, you might feel better about the whole thing.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives it a passable five out of ten, and looks at least somewhat forward to seeing where we go with this.

The folks out at A&E sent over a special treat for us today, folks, and this one’s a full-on doozy. They sent out a copy of Space:1999 Season One, and though the title makes it a raging anachronism, getting a look at what the hopeful souls of 1975 thought we’d be doing with the space program back then is a downright hoot today.

Space:1999 follows a group of astronauts on a lunar colony, when an accident involving nuclear waste storage blasts the moon out of its orbit, thus turning it into the equivalent of a huge, largely unsteerable spacecraft that the crew of Moonbase Alpha now ride upon. Not surprisingly, now that they’re stuck on the flying moon, they also find themselves eventually in deep space, and thus, find themselves also discovering all sorts of new phenomenon, species, and even some societies as part of their huge adventure.

This one is going to be a difficult one to deal with. Finding the nearly twenty one hours required to watch this will be no small task. Science fiction buffs might get along well here, but a good chance exists that the look will simply be too dated to deal with. Retro buffs will patently love this, though, as it’s gone well past “collectible” age and is well on its way to full-bore “antique” status.

The plots are a little on the preposterous side; you’d think that a moon hurtling through space might actually, you know, hit something at some point. Slim chance, yes, but chance all the same. And while I’m at it, I didn’t notice much of an explanation as to how they actually manage to go see any of these civilizations when the moon is literally hurtling through space.

Admittedly, it’s a little–okay, a lot–on the dated side, but the end result here is a fairly engaging dose of retro science fiction, a wonderful study of how writers in the seventies seldom thought about the future, and how their work would be irreparably damaged by the calendar rolling to the year 2000. It can be entertaining at times, even if the overall effect puts you in mind more of “low-budget Star Trek knockoff” than “clever science fiction enterprise”, because it’s willing to do some interesting things. The problem of course, as explained at length above, is that these “interesting things” are poorly explained at best.

If you’re willing to tolerate a really unpleasant look and some thoroughly bizarre plot, well, Space:1999 could be just what you’re looking for.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Space: 1999 a throughly excellent seven out of ten–it’s an interesting dose of retro science fiction, but if you keep the eye of a science fiction buff, well placed for making retro fans happy.

The soundtrack for this trailer is so melancholy that it gets under my skin.

Battle: Los Angeles follows Marine staff sergeant (Aaron Eckhart) and his new platoon as they battle against an alien invasion on the streets of Los Angeles. It is up to the sergeant and his men to save planet Earth.

The invasion begins March 11, 2011 in movie theaters everywhere.

Tron: Legacy made it to the next round of competition for VFX at the Oscars. After watching this reel, it is obvious Digital Domain deserves the recognition, backed by the fact that the Disney movie has made $245 million so far.  

Directed by first-timer Joseph Kosinski, the screenplay was co-written by Adam Horowitz (Lost), Richard Jefferies (Blood Tide, Living Hell), Edward Kitsis (Lost) and the director of the original movie, Steven Lisberger.

With that said, I get ecstatic about presentations of behind-the-scenes film making. Particularly a reel like this one from Digital Domain is priceless.  I am so impressed with the digital quality of the work.  Unbeknownst, Jeff Bridges was practically in every scene.  I thought he was just sitting on a cushion not wanting to play the game throughout the filming process.

Be warned if you haven’t seen the movie yet, lots of spoilers!  You view the digital effects from beginning to the end of the movie, a wonderful treat for anyone interested in filmmaking.