After looking at 4 of the biggest changes to the status quo just a few weeks ago, I thought it might be an opportune time to take a moment to see just how that status quo emerged in the first place. In most sci-fi works, or hell, most works set in the future at all, there are a few easy ways to fill in that gap between the story’s setting and the present era, and the main one is with a war. Wars happen all the time in real life, so it’s a logical thing to carry forward into the future; and wars, as most obviously seen in World War 2, often have huge effects on the balance of power and shape the world for decades to come. It’s a good way to explain why things are so different, or even why they aren’t quite as different as they should be. So here are 4 (usually offscreen) wars that helped establish the sci-fi worlds we’ve come to know and love.

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After the intensity of the Defiance season 3 premiere, things step back a little bit to give everyone a little room to breathe. Well, not everyone. Life always sucks when you’re Alak. And that doesn’t really mean that things are looking up, either.

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A lot of the time in long-running shows, or even just shows that manage a few seasons, there will be some big things that are brought up, and then never heard from again. Often it’s because the answer would’ve been a huge shakeup for the status quo, but not always. Sometimes it’s just a plot thread that was left hanging in case the writers ever decided they wanted to revisit it. But then the story started to go in a different direction, and it didn’t really make sense any more to dust that idea off and drag it out of the closet. So looking back on the finished shows later, it can become a rather large mystery for the fandoms: what is the deal with this unresolved plot thread?

In that vein, here are 4 big questions raised by series, usually early in their runs, that were never answered.

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Warping in on an unusual day of the week, the Obscure Sci-Fi Primer returns with a fan-requested show: the extremely short-lived 1999 series Harsh Realm. Clocking in at a meager 9 episodes, this is by far the shortest show to appear in the Primer to date. Harsh Realm deals with virtual reality, much like another show we’ve covered already. But while VR.5‘s virtual worlds were highly personal ones, Harsh Realm is far less so, having started as a high-tech training simulation for dealing with potential nuclear apocalypse. It’s also an (incredibly loose) adaptation of a comic book, and had a number of X-Files writers working on it, like Chris Carter and Vince Gilligan (although the latter wasn’t a writer here).

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If you’re not into Defiance quite yet, but you’re wondering what the deal is, you’ve come to the right place. While the official site does indeed contain brief overviews, they’re a bit dated, and not as comprehensive as they could be. And after all, it’s the well-developed backstory that really gives Defiance its potential; it’d be a shame to bury it all. So, I’d like to take a moment to introduce any newcomers, or even those casual viewers wondering about the background of Defiance, to the various alien species we’ve come to know collectively as the Votan.

UPDATED: Season 3 Information added!

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Defiance is back for season 3, and it certainly came roaring back like few others. It certainly put the Season 1 and Season 2 premieres to shame. But that level of excitement comes at a cost, and as is so often the case for this show, I don’t know if the direction we’re headed is a good one.

If you’re a Defiance fan who hasn’t popped onto the site in a while, we’re taking a different approach to reviews, with more focus on criticism and less recap. So proceed only if you’re caught up! Read more

In the time of episodic television, the status quo was king. No matter how bad things got, you’d always know that by the end of the episode, things would be back to normal. The rare exceptions were two-parters, but even then, it almost never had a lasting effect on the characters or the world. In sci-fi, this was usually a little more justifiable; when Kirk and company take off, they leave the planet of the week behind, and all the problems along with it. Other shows that didn’t have a starship at their disposal had a much harder time escaping that fact, often to the show’s detriment. And even running away aboard the Enterprise didn’t excuse the lack of character development that, say, Kirk’s infamous trysts should have had on him.

But once in a while, an otherwise episodic TV series would make a bold step, and that changed the show (or sometimes the entire franchise) forever. It might be a profound character moment, or the side effect of a planned retool, or even something as simple as a marked change in tone, but for whatever reason, these episodes took that status quo and shook it up so much that it never was quite the same.

And surprise, surprise, this list includes SPOILERS for the tagged shows, so proceed at your own risk if you aren’t caught up.

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So, we’ve taken our look back at the whole of SHIELD‘s second season. But that’s a very big picture thing, looking at the season as a whole. This week’s Friday Four is going the opposite direction, to showcase 4 of the best moments from season 2. They might be shocking surprises, or awesome camera work, or great character moments, but all four of these scenes stood out in my mind when thinking back on the season. What were they? Let’s find out!

And–do I really need to say it?–this list has SPOILERS for season 2.

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Now that it’s been a few weeks since the season 2 finale of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., we can get enough distance to take a look at the second season as a whole. This season was a marked improvement over the first, continuing the trend that started with the post-Captain America 2 episodes of season 1. It continued some plot threads from season one, but the main thrust of the season was largely centered on new territory for the MCU: the Inhumans. We’re going to look at three things here: the development of characters, the overall progression of the various plot threads, and some of the more general themes present throughout.

And it’s a retrospective, so duh: spoilers for all of season 1 and 2 ahead.

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A proposed Enterprise redesign for another undeveloped movie, by Ralph McQuarrie of Star Wars fame.

We’re going to try something new this month. Instead of a season for a show that was canceled, it’s going to be a look at the plans for a series that never actually materialized at all. Hopefully it’s just as popular, as I’ve got a few more of these we can examine in the future, and let’s face it–there are a lot of canceled shows, but not all of them had enough planning and forethought put into them that they could fill out a full article. And what better place to start out than in the franchise that featured in the first “What Could Have Been?” That’s right, we’re looking at a Star Trek series that never got produced: a continuation of the original series, with new characters and an upgraded ship called Star Trek: Phase II.

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