Being a science fiction fan goes hand in hand with keeping an open mind and refusing to adhere too closely to labels. At least for me it does. As such, I try not to get too hung up about where SF ends and where, say, fantasy or horror begins. If a story is good a story is good, and I’m eager to roll with it.

This is not to say that I don’t recognize a blended genre when I see it. And the newest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “The Griffin Incident,” is deliberate in testing the guardrails of its audience. (And why we’re so excited that director Axelle Carolyn is the guest on this week’s STARLOG Podcast.)

Apart from its being a little gross, the latest Trek adventure crosses the neutral zone into the supernatural. Are spirits allowed in Star Trek, Hollywood’s haven of hard SF? Well, if you want to insist on calling Deep Space Nine’s Bajoran Prophets “wormhole aliens” and not Gods, you are welcome to do so. But Major Kira will roll her eyes at you when you aren’t looking.

Blending genres like this is certainly difficult, but when it’s done right, that’s when classics are made. Is Ridley Scott’s Alien a horror film in space, or a science fiction film with gross-outs? The answer is, to quote Groucho Marx when pestered into a response, “I’m all right, how are you?” (It’s too bad The Marx Brothers never made an SF movie, though the end of Duck Soup does get a little surreal.)

Crossing your arms and demanding strict fealty to genre norms is a surefire way to close yourself off to some great work. That doesn’t mean loving everything just because it happens to include a laser beam, but pitching a wide tent opens yourself up to discovery. Sci-fi is always my primary passion, but Gandalf and Jason action figures can fit in my toy chest alongside C-3PO and R2-D2.

We here at STARLOG are very lucky to have our comrades at FANGORIA just down the hall. (Yes, please picture us all in one building together, or maybe a giant apartment with a sunken pit like the Beatles in Help!) And you can be sure that our interests overlap more than you might think. My evenings on the town may mean dressing up like Tron Guy more than Trash, but celebrating genre excellence means being eager to share what’s great more than caring about coloring strictly within the lines — especially when that color is red.

Jordan Hoffman, Communications Officer

A few Battlestar Galactica-inspired sidearms and tucked away daggers on “leather-clad female assassins” led to grand conclusions involving the Iranian hostage situations and the lack of closure following the war in Vietnam.

It’s a fascinating bit of editorializing from a time decades before the oversold, over-commercialized convention scene of today. And that’s why the STARLOG archive remains so fascinating. Essays like Gerrold’s can be simultaneously prescient and, uh, “a little much.”

You can hear for yourself as I read excerpts on the most recent STARLOG podcast to Dave, whose responses range from “yep, of course” to “wait, what’s he talking about?”

Just hit the “Listen” button below, and subscribe to the STARLOG Podcast on any podcasting platform.

The producers of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are taking that whole “to boldly go where no one has gone before” thing to heart. While there have been horror episodes going back to the in-time-for-Halloween broadcast of “Catspaw” in 1967, there’s never been anything quite like “The Griffin Incident,” the second episode of SNW’s fourth season.

It’s creepy, it’s gory, it’s genuinely shocking — and its director, Axelle Carolyn, the Brussels-born sicko whose previous work includes The House of Bly Manor, Mayfair Witches, American Horror Story, and, very soon, the new iteration of Carrie — is this week’s guest on the STARLOG Podcast.

Axelle walks us through her early Trek fandom (not easy to accomplish growing up in Belgium), how she landed the gig, and what it’s like to parachute into a preexisting series with a particular vision.

It is highly advised that you first watch “The Griffin Incident” before listening to our chat, as we travel at warp speed into spoilers, including one specific sequence that may rattle hardcore Trek fans (and fans of pop culture iconography in general) throughout the galaxy!

The new episode of The STARLOG Podcast, like the ones before it, is on whatever podcasting platform you prefer. Or you can just click the little “listen” button below.

SCI-FI

After 218 television episodes and a feature film, one assumed that Chris Carter’s second X-Files movie, 2008’s The X-Files: I Want to Believe, would have been exactly as the conspiracy-minded creator wanted it. But this was apparently not the case! But subscribers to Hulu and Disney + will soon be able to watch The X-Files: I Want to Believe - Vrach Frankenshteyn, a darker cut film that one can watch with limited knowledge (or memory) of deep X-Files lore. Check out the trailer here.

SCIENCE

The funk of a naked mole-rat queen will stop the members of its colonies from fighting (or mating), according to a very weird new study. You can learn more at ScienceNews, before the government starts bottling this stuff and spraying it at crowds.

CULTURE

Land artist Charles Ross has been working on his desert-based installation/environment “Star Axis” for 50 years. That’s like ten times longer than Michelangelo worked on The Sistine Chapel. When it soon completes, it will look like a real life STARLOG cover. Click here for more.

ETHICS

SpaceX, the company owned by Earth’s only trillionaire, Elon Musk, just crashed a rocket into the Moon. Sure, nobody lives there, but shouldn’t he at least send a clean-up crew? Marcia Dunn of the Associated Press has a further investigation into the trouble with lunar litter.