Welcome Message | 'Brave New World': Did Marvel's adamantium come from space? | 'Star Trek: Section 31' got us thinking... Should you have to do your homework before you watch a movie?
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Houston, we have a newsletter…
If you got that reference, you’re in the right place. Welcome to Watch This Space, Space.com's new sci-fi and space entertainment newsletter. I'm your host, Ian Stokes, and I’m here to help you choose what to watch the next time you settle down for a sci-fi binge on your TV, tablet, or games console.
Every week, my team of fellow nerds, er, talented writers people who were available, and I will be shouting about what’s new in science fiction, over-analyzing trailers, arguing about movie rankings, and writing in-depth retrospectives on seminal works from sci-fi's storied history to save you from the doom of endless scrolling through streaming services. I guarantee* you will find something cool to watch by reading this newsletter every week.
Want to know if the latest Star Wars show is any good? We've got you covered (spoiler: it probably isn’t). Finished Starfield and need a new sci-fi game to blast through? Oh, we've got recommendations for days (spoiler: it’s Space Marine 2). Want to see the 100% objectively correct ranking of the Star Fleet captains? We've made it so (spoiler: no, you’ll have to read that one yourself).
Watch This Space will be warping into your inbox on the third Friday of every month at around 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT.
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See you out there,
Ian Stokes, Entertainment Editor, Space
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Hello there, and welcome to the first-ever edition of Watch This Space, your guide to the best sci-fi entertainment in the cosmos…. Well mostly on Earth, but what are you gonna do?
Captain America: Brave New World flew into theaters last week, providing the ideal Valentine’s Day movie for nerds who didn’t love their partner enough to go see the new Briget Jones movie instead. Despite strong performances from Anthony Mackie and Harrison Ford, critics have almost unanimously declared this one “mid”, and we have to agree.
The MCU’s ongoing slate of mediocrity aside, it’s great to see Mackie step up to the plate as the new Cap, and the movie did pose some interesting questions about the future of the MCU (and the real-world science that inspires its technical mumbo jumbo).
If you’re looking for something to stream this weekend, and don’t want to just default to rewatching Firefly for the 5th time while doomscrolling Twitter, well, there’s good news and bad news.
Good news is: you probably haven’t watched Silo, so you should. Even if season 2 doesn’t have the same tight focus of S1, it’s arguably more intriguing on a human level, and while the twists aren’t as grand and obvious, they’re certainly as meaningful. Give it a go, and don’t forget it’s based on the Wool / Shift / Dust books by Hugh Howey, if you want more of that world. And while not space-based sci-fi either, Severance on Apple TV is an absolute gem, and remains so into S2, even if some are grumbling it’s getting too weird for its own good. Embrace the weirdness, I say, and enjoy the pineapples.
Bad news if you’re looking to watch Dune and feel all high-brow with your sci-fi, though - that’s off Netflix US, and onto Max this month (both movies, boooooo). Right after the late-Jan price-hike. Bad form, Netflix. At least they’re clearing out Green Lantern too. Silver-linings, eh?
Over on Planet Gamer, Sony’s State of Play showcase was packed with sci-fi goodness. I’m a notorious Borderlands hater so I read the fourth entry’s release date as more of a threat than anything else, but even outside of that, we saw more of Directive 8020, which is giving off serious Event Horizon vibes and the reveal of Saros, which dares to ask the question “what if Returnal, but with nerd-favorite Rahul Kohli in the protagonist’s seat". Ah yes, please, all of that.
There weren’t any huge rumblings in the written word this past month, but the prequel novel Star Wars: The Mask of Fear lands next week, and we managed to sneak in a great chat with New York Times bestselling author Alexander Freed ahead of the launch. Oh, Citizen Sleeper 2 launched at the end of January. Yes, I know that’s a game, but it’s not — it’s an interactive book in disguise. An excellent one too, so go play it.
It’s been a quiet month for sci-fi releases across all mediums, but hopefully, things should start to spin up in March. On the movie front, we’ve got the star-studded dark sci-fi comedy Mickey 17, which looks bloody fantastic, while gamers have the bonkers-looking Split Fiction to look forward to. If you want to be pedantic, it’s only half sci-fi, but after playing through developer Hazelight Studios’ previous game, It Takes Two, with my partner, I can’t wait for some more quality co-op gaming to test the strength of our relationship. We survived Overcooked 2, and we’ll survive this.
And you’ve survived this debut edition of the Watch This Space newsletter. Drop me a message over at community@space.com if you want to defend Borderlands, and I'll see you next month.
It took a few updates, but Predator: Hunting Grounds has become a notable asymmetrical multiplayer game with a refreshing and cohesive take on the sci-fi universe.
JWST faces potential 20% budget cut 4 years after launch | Space Quiz! How far away if the Milky Way's satellite dwarf galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud? | ISS should be deorbited 'as soon as possible,' Musk says
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The team overseeing NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been directed to prepare for up to 20% in budget cuts that would touch on every aspect of the flagship observatory's operations, which are managed by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Maryland. The potential cut comes even as the space observatory is more in demand than ever before, with astronomers requesting the equivalent of nine years' worth of Webb observing time in one operational year.
Elon Musk thinks we should start moving on from the International Space Station (ISS). The end is already in sight for the outpost, which has been showing signs of its advanced age. But its international partners plan to bring the station down in a controlled fashion in 2030, using a deorbit vehicle provided by SpaceX.
We now know who's flying on Blue Origin's next suborbital space tourism mission -- most of them, anyway. NS-30 will lift off from Blue Origin's West Texas launch site at an as-yet unspecified date. It will carry six people on a brief trip to and from suborbital space, and the company just revealed who five of them are.
When it comes to baby blankets, the fluffier, the better - and astronomers have discovered that some infant stars in the early universe also preferred "fluffy" pre-natal cocoons. Scientists have learned a great deal about star formation in the universe, but it remains a mystery if stellar bodies formed the same way in the early cosmos.
A SpaceX rocket stage fell to Earth early Wednesday (Feb. 19), blazing a trail of fire through European skies. Across the English region of Lincolnshire, the fireball was visible over homes, with locals posting images on social media
Today, we know of Mars as a cold, dry desert, with patches of subterranean ice and ice caps at its poles. Billions of years ago, however, liquid water flowed freely across the planet. And, while NASA's various Mars rovers have uncovered signs that such water once existed on Mars, there's perhaps no better evidence of an ice-free, shallow lake than these two sets of ripples in Martian rock.
On Feb. 21, 1931, Germany launched its first liquid-fueled rocket … sort of. The rocket only made it about 10 feet off the ground. To be fair, the rocket itself was only two feet tall, so it did achieve an altitude of about five times its height. The rocket was named Hückel-Winkler 1 after the engineers who designed and built it. Hückel-Winkler 1 was powered by a combination of liquid oxygen and liquid methane. It lifted off from a drilling field near Dessau, Germany on two separate flights. After the first launch was a failure, the rocket did reach its planned altitude of 500 feet during its second flight three weeks later.
