We’re continuing our Sci-Fi Channel origin series by digging into LEXX: a cult space opera about a cowardly non-hero, an undead assassin, a love-obsessed robot head, and a former love slave flying a living ship built to destroy planets. It’s silly, dark, occasionally bad, sometimes brilliant, and almost never safe.

In our ongoing series we’re tracing Jerry Anderson’s strange, essential legacy and why early Sci Fi Channel programming kept looping Supercar, Stingray, and Space: 1999 into the brains of American kids who had no idea what they were watching, only that it felt like a secret door into another era of science fiction TV.

This is a preview of our ongoing series on the origins and programming of the Sci-Fi Channel. I promise we do actually talk about Gerry Anderson in this one.

William Shatner's TekWar is a so-so cyberpunk cop story that somehow grew into novels, comics, trading cards, syndicated TV movies, a USA Network and Sci Fi Channel series, and a PC video game that many people still call one of the worst ever made. The real story is not the plot, it’s the momentum. We follow the money, the branding, and the era’s obsession with recognizable names to figure out how this franchise kept getting revived even as it struggled to become genuinely good.

A superhero team that rides in an ice cream truck? Courtney Cox?? The Predator??? sounds like a joke until you actually watch it. We go deep on Misfits of Science, the short-lived 1985 NBC sci-fi superhero series that later found a second life on early Sci-Fi Channel lineups and then quietly vanished, shrouded in tragedy.

Gul Dukat ruled Terok Nor with an iron fist, measuring Bajorans like inventory even as the occupation began to crack under resistance and political pressure. We unpack how fear of assassination, obsession with control, and a need to be admired can fuse into something far more dangerous than simple rage.

We start with the big thesis: the Sci-Fi Channel is an early masterclass in niche marketing, built on the belief that sci-fi fans are loyal and underserved. From there we dig into the credibility play of bringing in Gene Roddenberry and Isaac Asimov, and how the network’s direction shifts once the people with real “skin in the game” are gone. We also revisit the weirdest, most charming early experiments like Faster-Than-Light Newsfeed, the idea that the network itself has a story, and the scrappy reality of filling a schedule with syndicated classics before the bigger deals arrive.

In our classic third installment of the Highlander franchise (because of the reported first footage of the remake premiering) we really have a blast talking about all the other fun stuff we'd been waiting to cover.

Believe it or not, Highlander is supposed to be simple: immortals fight, heads come off, lightning happens. Then the sequels show up and the canon turns into a sword fight with itself. We pick apart why Highlander 2 and Highlander 3 feel like they were written in a different universe, and why the Highlander TV series quietly becomes the place where the franchise finally gets rules, structure, and something like continuity.