Nine Inch Nails: Broken / Fixed (1992)

NIN: Broken E.P. (1992)

Broken is an angry, audible 'F**k You!' to the stifling conventions and contrivances of the music business, conceived, written, performed and co-produced by Trent Reznor. It's the sound of Reznor the 'commodity' hating on the people that want him to be marketable and make them money.

Ironically, it went on to make a lot of money, but it also saw NIN turn from being syth-pop-friendly to kicking it with the Industrial big league.

It wasn't just a Pretty Hate Machine (1989) retread with distortion, it was a whole new NIN sound that two years later, once the anger had subsided, would further develop into something altogether more mature, resulting in one of the best albums the genre ever produced: The Downward Spiral.

To promote the release a short film was made (but not officially released). It complemented the music in an intentionally non-media-friendly way. See The 'Broken' Movie (1993) for details.

Street Hawk: The Complete Series (1985)

Street Hawk: The Complete Series (1985)

Dirs. Various / 13 eps, approx 48 mins each (the Pilot is 70 mins).

A short-lived TV series about motorcycle-cop Jesse Mach (Rex Smith), a man with a "test pilot mentality" who gets injured in the line of duty but finds new purpose as a government-funded and anonymous do-gooder named Street Hawk!

The bike can reach speeds of 300 mph, which on public roads is as ridiculous (or as amazing) as it sounds. The action scenes are mostly clichéd, including tons of empty cardboard boxes on side streets that cars scatter dramatically as they roar through in hot pursuit of speeding bad guys, but if you're a fan of 80s weekly stuff like The A-Team, then, like me, you may enjoy it, regardless.

The 70 minute Pilot isn't as good as the 12 episodes that follow it, so it'd be advisable to not give up too early if you're willing to give it a try.

The Sandman: The Dream Hunters (1999)

The Sandman: The Dream Hunters (1999)

Author: Neil Gaiman | Illustrator: Yoshitaka Amano | Page Count: 128

"The fly crawled into the fox's eyeball. She did not blink, although the tickling felt like madness in her mind."

Some stories have to be written; they make your brain itch until you relent and put them down on paper.

I can't say if that was the case with The Dream Hunters, but it certainly feels like it was from a reader's point of view. It's a novella, not a comic. It's a fairy-tale for adults, but it's one that can stir a withered heart out of its apathetic and cynical safe haven. It can remind a reader why life and love deserve more attention than most of us are apt to give in these hurried and dark days.

Gaiman teamed with legendary Japanese illustrator Yoshitaka Amano to achieve the task. Together they created magic. If the book had a soundtrack it'd be played on harp strings spun from silk, coupled with the sound forest winds make as they brush golden leaves.

RoboCop: Film Trilogy (1987-93)

RoboCop (1987)

Dir. Paul Verhoeven

I don't know how it was in the rest of the movie-watching world, but in my small corner of it the RoboCop poster was an almost permanent fixture in VHS rental stores in the early 1990s, and consequently I'd an image burned into my brain of how I thought the film's protagonist would be onscreen long before I saw the actual film.

As it turned out, despite the B-Movie-esque title and violent and gimmicky exterior it exceeded my youthful imagination, mostly because lurking beneath the imagery is a semi-sophisticated drama staged by Dir. Paul Verhoeven and brought to onscreen life by a perfectly cast Peter Weller in the title role.

I use the term 'semi-sophisticated' because parts of it haven't aged well, particularly the OTT comic book villains, but the scathing script and emotional heart of the work more often than not make up for any failings elsewhere.

Star Trek: The Ashes of Eden (1995)

Star Trek: The Ashes of Eden (1995)

Authors: William Shatner / Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens  |  Page Count: 309

'He gulped a mouthful of Scotch. Felt it burn his throat — ice cold and fire hot at the same time. That was his poetry. Sensation. Being alive.'

TAoE begins just a few hours after the ending of the Star Trek: Generations (1994) movie, so you'll need to have seen it first. But to really get the most from the book you'll need to have seen all the TOS movies because the story is one of reflection on what's passed as well as a look to the future. Even though it's technically set post-Generations, ninety-nine percent of it is a flashback to an era before Kirk stepped aboard the Enterprise-B, shortly after the political upheaval that occurred at Camp Khitimer (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)).

Without a ship to command Kirk is a little lost, as if his reason for living has been suspended, and daily Starfleet duties do little to assuage the feelings. He's secretly hungering for adventure, and more often than not someone with that goal will either find what he's looking for or set it in motion himself.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete Second Season (2009)

The Sarah Jane Adventures:
The Complete Second Season (2009)

Dirs: Various | Episodes: 12 episodes, approx 27 mins each.

I was surprised to see one of the regular cast members leave in the first two-parter of the second season. I won't say who, because of spoilers, but it's not Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen), so the series survives the upheaval. But the relationships that were built up in season one had a lot more potential depth to them. I'd even begun to try and predict where things would go after the season finale.

Happily, the replacement character is a similar shaped peg that fits into the existing format well.

There's nothing herein that I'd call filler, but most of the stories are weaker than what came before. The exception, which was both the highlight and the one that quickly became my favourite episode of all so far, was The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith (Dir. Graeme Harper). It's a powerful story making use of a plot device that likely won't be new to fans of science fiction, but that doesn't lessen it. It packs a potent emotional punch that actually benefits from being simplified for a younger audience.