Gallipoli (1981)

Peter Weir's 1981 war drama Gallipoli is a stunning film, widely acclaimed and rightfully considered today to be one of Australia's all-time best. It is many things at once: a historical account of a military campaign, a personal drama about two young men's friendship, and a powerful comment on the futility of war. It is one of those rare films that I think everybody should aim to see at least once. If you are like most viewers, that one viewing will not be forgotten in a hurry.

The films opens in 1915. Mark Lee plays Archie Hamilton, an eighteen year-old sprinter dazzled by the propaganda that is pulling young men across Western Australia into fighting in the Great War. At a racing event he meets Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson), a hard-up former railway worker. Together they make the journey from the country into Perth, where Archie persuades Frank to join him in enlisting for the war. After training in Egypt, they are then dispatched to the Turkish coast for an advance against the enemy at Anzac Cove.

Outlander: "Castle Leoch"

Former army nurse Claire Beacham (Catriona Balfe) has been transported back in time from 1945 to 1743 Scotland, where she has been rescued from English redcoats by a group of Jacobite rebels. Now a guest in the nearby Castle Leoch, Claire must use her wits to ensure she is not imprisoned as an English spy - or even accused of being a witch.

Before anything else it is worth appreciating just how effectively "Castle Leoch" explores the experience of travelling back in time. The initial panic, the confusion and the sheer terror of it is well played by both the script and Catriona Balfe's performance, but also the steely resignation that comes when Claire accepts that she has indeed slipped back 202 years and that without careful consideration of her words and action she is likely to die at the end of a knife, a rope, and on top of a fire.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "Our Man Bashir"

It's 27 November 1995, and time for another episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

A transporter accident forces the signal for several members of the Deep Space Nine crew to be stored inside the station's computer systems. While the main system is completely filled up with the neural patterns of the crew, their bodies are shunted into Quark's holosuite - and into Dr Bashir's (Alexander Siddig) 1960s espionage simulation.

Deep Space Nine was always fairly resistant about making holodeck episodes. They were the bane of The Next Generation's existence, with some calamity trapping characters inside the Enterprise's holodeck at least once a season - certainly with an alarming enough rate that one wondered why the technology was not declared illegal and retired from use. Introducing such an episode here sets off some initial alarm bells, but thankfully "Our Man Bashir" emerges as a brilliant - and brilliantly funny - episode.

The Pull List: 27 January 2016, Part II

From the outset ODY-C has been a bit of a hard sell: a gender-flipped science fiction retelling of The Odyssey, blended together with The Thousand and One Nights and Moby Dick, told in a sexualised, Metal Hurlant-style fashion with verse narration replacing dialogue. I'm pretty sure that, with all those elements mashed together, ODY-C could be the most love-it-or-hate-it comic on the market right now.

I am firmly on the side of loving it. Christian Ward's artwork and panel layouts are tremendously imaginative, and beautifully coloured. It uses a tremendously rich palette, and regularly experiments with the panels themselves. Gods and monsters regularly shatter them. Rare moments of dialogue get rendered as sound effects. The scale of the action varies wonderfully from page to page.

Each issue also comes with a fascinating essay at the end, written by Dani Coleman and adding a great amount of insight and value in terms of unpacking and analysing the story Matt Fraction is telling. As for Fraction himself, the verse in this issue is sensational. It's well worth reading it aloud just to feel how rhythmically in falls off the tongue, and how evocative the descriptions are.

If you're ever looking for a book to break your comfort bubble of DC and Marvel superhero titles, then ODY-C should absolutely be on your radar. Nine issues in, and it's close to faultless. (5/5)

Under the cut: reviews of Black Canary, Daredevil and Revival.

Babylon 5: "In the Beginning"

It's 4 January 1998, and time for a Babylon 5 made-for-television film: In the Beginning.

Picking up the rights to Babylon 5 for just one season must have been a difficult choice for TNT. Why spend the money making and promoting a new series for your channel only to end it after just 22 episodes? I strongly suspect this why TNT also moved forward with a series of TV movies. They could exploit higher production budgets, be packaged individually for home video release, and extend the property a little further than just the single season. It made a lot of financial sense. Had they been more successful there's a good chance that TNT could have made a lot more of them in subsequent years. Sadly this did not prove to be the case, and in the end they only produced four.

While it was the second TV movie to be shot, In the Beginning was the first to be aired. It premiered in January 1998, just before TNT's launch of the fifth season. It recounts the events of the Earth-Minbari War that dominated the back story of Babylon 5, and showed the participation of several of the series' key characters: Sheridan, Delenn, Franklin, Londo and G'Kar.

Alien vs Predator (2004)

It is all Predator 2's fault. Back when that 1990 sequel was in production, a member of the design team mocked up the skull of an Alien from the 1979 Ridley Scott film and added it to a way of bizarre skulls inside the Predator's spaceship. It was intended as a small in-joke, a knowing reference for science fiction fans and film geeks to notice and have a little chuckle at it.

Or maybe it's the fault of Dark Horse Comics, who had the rights to publish comic books based on both Alien and Predator, and whose editor in chief noticed the Alien skull and based an entire comic miniseries around the idea of Aliens and Predators fighting: Alien vs Predator. Or even Activision, who promptly developed an Alien vs Predator videogame for the Super Nintendo console.

In the end, however, it is probably fair to lay the blame at the feet of 20th Century Fox, who green-lit the concept, developed it for several years and finally released an Alien vs Predator feature film in 2004 directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil). It even had the world's most unaware tagline: whoever wins... we lose.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "The Sword of Kahless"

It's 20 November 1995, and time for another episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

The ageing Klingon master Kor (John Colicos) teams up with Dax (Terry Farrell) and Worf (Michael Dorn) in a search for the fabled Sword of Kahless: the bat'leth originally wielded by the founder of the Klingon Empire. Their search is interrupted by the arrival of the disgraced son of Duras, Toral (Rick Pasqualone), and even when they find the sword they may be unable to keep it.

"The Sword of Kahless" is another attempt to integrate Worf into the regular cast of Deep Space Nine, by providing a sequel to the earlier episode "Blood Oath". That episode reunited the three Klingon commanders from the original 1960s Star Trek, killing two of them off in the process. This one brings back the sole survivor, and sends him on a quest with Dax and Worf. The rest of the regular cast barely get a look-in.

Outlander: "Sassenach"

In 1945 Claire Randall (Catriona Balfe) and her husband Frank (Tobias Menzies) take a holiday to Scotland to reconnect with one another following the Second World War. When Claire visits a stone circle one afternoon, she finds herself inexplicably thrown centuries in the past and into the Scotland of 1743 where roving English patrols are hunting down the Jacobite rebels.

Outlander is an American/British co-production based on the romantic time travel novels by Diana Gabaldon. The series caught my eye when it was first released in mid-2014, but it has taken until now for me to sit down and watch its first episode. I was interesting in seeing the series due to an interest in both time travel stories and Scottish history, and also because the series has been supervised by writer and executive producer Ronald D. Moore whose previous work on Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine have impressed me a great deal.

As a pilot episode "Sassenach" is overly long and a bit clunky, but it points to some pretty solid historical drama down the line. It is definitely worth giving it a watch and seeing where the series goes.