Books Teen Horror Time Machine Dearly Departed: The Dead Girlfriend and Guilty  By Alissa Burger | Published on February 5, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share The characters in teen horror novels are constantly breaking up, making up, and swapping partners, with lots of high tension drama, hurt feelings, and elaborate revenge plots. In R.L. Stine’s standalone book The Dead Girlfriend (1993) and Diane Hoh’s Nightmare Hall book Guilty (also 1993), there’s the added complication of death, which presents a dangerous combination of intrigue, suspicion, danger, and grief.  In Stine’s The Dead Girlfriend, Annie Kiernan and her family have just relocated to the small town of Shocklin Falls, where her parents have taken jobs at the local community college. They moved in early May, so Annie is stuck finishing out the year in a new school, where she makes friends and enemies alike. But first, while going for a bike ride around her new town up to a cliff overlooking the local falls, she meets Jonathan Morgan. Dark, brooding, and handsome, he stands at the edge of the drop off, staring intently down, and Annie’s first thought is that he plans to jump. She screams, making a memorable first impression, but he makes just as big of an impression on her, with Annie reflecting “I think I fell in love with him then. Or something like that. I’m not sure. It’s impossible to explain” (8-9). Jonathan tells her he had no intention of jumping, laughing off the very suggestion. It appears that he has been stood up by a friend who was supposed to meet him there, but he’s plenty happy to hang out with Annie instead, which promises to be a pleasant adventure … until she goes to grab her bike and finds that someone has slashed both tires in the few minutes she has been talking with Jonathan. He walks her—and her disabled bike—home and asks her to be his date to a party on Friday night, and all seems to be doing pretty well for Annie’s first afternoon in Shocklin Falls, until a mysterious girl named Ruby catches up with them, cryptically tells Annie “Watch out for Jonathan […] Really. He’s dangerous. A real dangerous guy” (21), then pedals away.  Annie runs through a series of possible explanations in her mind: maybe Ruby and Jonathan are frenemies, or Ruby is a potential romantic rival for Jonathan’s attention, or the girl just has a weird sense of humor. Whatever it is, Annie shrugs it off, embraces her new life in Shocklin Falls, and heads out on her Friday night date with no serious reservations. At the party, Annie meets lots of new people, including Jonathan’s best friend Caleb, whose idea of a good time is to climb the fence surrounding the local batting cages and pretend he’s a monkey, and Caleb’s horrified and long-suffering girlfriend, Dawn. While Caleb is a bit much and Annie can’t get a read on exactly what Jonathan and Ruby’s relationship is—sometimes they seem to really dislike each other, other times they sneak off into dark corners to have what look like pretty intimate conversations—Dawn really takes Annie under her wing, helping her get acclimated to her new school and their friend group.  Dawn’s the one who tells Annie about Jonathan’s former girlfriend, Louisa. There’s a memorial display of Louisa at school, featuring “a photo of a pretty girl. She had all-American good looks. Bright blonde hair. Flashing blue eyes. High cheekbones like a model. A beautiful smile revealing perfect white teeth” (53). Louisa’s death is shrouded in mystery and this uncertainty seems to be at the heart of the warnings Annie has heard about Jonathan: Louisa and Jonathan had gone for a bike ride and were at the falls when she died, and no one knows exactly what happened. Jonathan told people that he thought he saw someone on the path, went to check it out, and when he came back, Louisa was nowhere to be seen. When he looked over the falls, “he saw her bike. Down below. All mangled. It had caught on the rocks […] They dragged her body out downriver […] Two days later” (60). It could have been an accident, foul play, or suicide, and while just about everyone who knew Louisa has pretty strong feelings about what they think happened, no one knows for sure.  Tensions build and despite her reservations, Annie finds herself unable to resist Jonathan. But someone else seems to be trying just as hard to keep Annie and Jonathan apart, orchestrating “accidents” to frighten Annie and take her out of the picture. Someone sabotages her research project file, deleting all of her notes and replacing them with a clear warning: “STAY AWAY FROM JONATHAN. IT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE” (71). She gets threatening phone calls with similar whispered warnings. The school computer Annie habitually uses is rigged to electrocute her when she touches the keyboard. When Annie has a birthday party at her house, someone horrifically murders her poor cat, who is adorably named Goggles. And Jonathan’s behavior becomes increasingly troubling, including another bike ride to the falls (which you would think he wouldn’t be quite so anxious to return to time and again), where he takes off in a panic, leaving Annie behind.  The falls are at the heart of the mystery and are also where the truth is revealed, though it comes out in layers. Annie finally broaches the topic of Louisa’s death with Jonathan, figuring that it can help her solve the mystery of who is trying to scare her away from him. She is sensitive to his silence, assuming that his reluctance to talk about Louisa comes from grief and pain, as she notes that “You’ve never talked about Louisa once […] You have to tell me the whole story about Louisa. I know you cared about her so much” (161). But it turns out this couldn’t be further from the truth and Jonathan explodes, screaming “Are you crazy, Annie? […] I hated Louisa! I hated her so much, I killed her” (161, emphasis original). At first glance, this seems like a pretty straightforward confession, but it’s really just hyperbolic angst and Jonathan quickly goes on to clarify that he didn’t push Louisa, but he blames himself for her death because “If I hadn’t brought Louisa here, she wouldn’t have died” (164), which really isn’t anything close to the same thing.  There’s more to his feelings of guilt though, because while he was dating Louisa, Jonathan and Ruby were also seeing each other, and he planned to break up with Louisa so that he and Ruby could be together. While everyone thinks Jonathan and Louisa were alone at the falls on the day Louisa died, Ruby was there too, and Louisa went over the falls when he left the two girls alone together for a couple of minutes. This brings the mysteriously complicated relationship between Jonathan and Ruby into clearer focus, as Jonathan confesses to Annie that “After Ruby killed Louisa, I was sick. I couldn’t stand the sight of Ruby. She kept trying to get me to go out with her. But I felt so guilty. So horribly guilty. I didn’t want to even talk to Ruby again. But she kept following me. She would never leave me alone” (167, emphasis original). Ruby followed Jonathan and Annie to the falls and when he identifies her as the murderer, she emerges from the woods screaming, with her face “twisted in a frightening expression of pure rage” (165), repeatedly calling Jonathan a liar. Jonathan and Ruby’s altercation becomes physical and in the struggle, Ruby falls over the edge of the falls and while Annie had felt brief certainty that Jonathan wasn’t a murderer, it seems like he is now and if he wants to keep that secret, Annie has to go too.  When Annie goes to flee, it’s friendly, reliable Dawn to the rescue … except this salvation is just another bait-and-switch. Dawn has been constructing a narrative, positioning herself as beyond suspicion of being interested in Jonathan by dating Caleb, which allows her to be in Jonathan’s orbit without being identifiable as one of the many girls vying for his affections. And she’s figured out the next step of her narrative construction as well, one in which Annie is both murderer and victim, and she and Jonathan can finally be together (whether he likes it or not). As Dawn lays out this sequence of events, “I saw Annie push Ruby over the cliff” (175). After that, she tells Jonathan, “Then […] Annie tried to push you over the side. But Annie slipped, and she accidentally fell herself” (175). Dawn is going to eliminate the competition, cover for Jonathan killing Ruby, and in return, he’ll have to love her. (How Caleb factors into this equation is a bit of a mystery, but Dawn sees him as collateral damage, entirely disposable, whether that means breaking up with him or pushing him over the cliff too). Thankfully, it doesn’t come to that—Ruby DIDN’T fall to her death, she summoned the police, and they come rushing to the rescue. After giving their police statements, Annie and Jonathan are right back to happily dating … actually, even happier, now that no one is receiving death threats.  Jonathan’s grief process (or lack thereof) is a point of speculation and misunderstanding in The Dead Girlfriend, but mourning is a central focus of Hoh’s Guilty, in which Kit Sullivan has to figure out how to move on and cope with the tragic death of her boyfriend Robert Brown, who everyone calls Brownie. Kit and Brownie met during freshmen orientation in a very “opposites attract” dynamic: a shy girl meeting a life-of-the-party guy. They have a strong and close-knit friend group, including Brownie’s sister Callie, Kit’s high school friend Allen, and her roommate LuAnn, and Brownie’s new friend Davis. Much like Jonathan and Louisa, no one knows exactly what happened when Brownie died because he and Kit were the only ones who were there: they took a canoe out on the river near campus, but the current was stronger than they were prepared for, the canoe capsized, and while Brownie got Kit to the shore and safety, he was swept back into the current and died. But in this case, no one blames Kit except for Kit herself, who struggles with survivor’s guilt and goes to great lengths to try to outrun her feelings of grief and responsibility.  For starters, she changes her name: Kit is short for Katherine and after Brownie’s death, she starts going by Katie instead. This is intended to be a clear and self-defining break between her pre- and post-trauma life, though it is a bit of an uphill battle. Allen, who has been her friend since they were in high school, has always known her as Kit, though he seems to go along with whatever will make her happy. When Katie’s roommate LuAnn slips up and calls Katie by the wrong name, Katie quickly and brusquely corrects her, saying “I told you not to call me that […] I told all of you. If you don’t call me Katie, I’m not going to answer you” (21, emphasis original). What’s more, Katie’s new name comes with some big personality changes as well: while Kit had been reserved and responsible, Katie is much more spontaneous and a bigger risk taker. She dances in the fountain in the quad, blows off homework to go to parties, climbs the rickety fire escape at Nightmare Hall, and breaks into the gym to go swimming in the university pool after hours. Brownie was the life of the party and in some ways, it seems like Katie may be trying to step into his role as a way of keeping him alive and close, but she is also doing all she can to avoid having to cope with her complicated feelings of grief and responsibility.  All of Katie’s friends reassure her that Brownie’s death was an accident and that no one blames her, but this comfort is complicated when someone begins harassing and threatening Katie. Things go missing from her room and someone writes “GUILTY” (27) in the dust on the hood of her car when she and her friends are at the movies. After she climbs in the window at the top of Nightmare Hall’s fire escape, she is looking around in a closet when she hits her head on a beam and is knocked unconscious; when she comes to, she has been zipped into an industrial-strength garment bag where she is slowly suffocating and has to fight her way out. While she’s swimming in the empty pool, someone grabs her from under the water and pulls her down, nearly drowning her. She starts hearing Brownie’s voice, first in her dorm room, saying “It’s all your fault” (42, emphasis original) and later, singing “Happy Birthday” in an empty room at Nightmare Hall where the friends have gathered for a birthday party. Katie finds herself fighting for her life while trying to figure out which of her friends might secretly blame her for Brownie’s death. To make matters worse, given her recent erratic behavior, her friends are quick to dismiss Katie’s fears, telling her she’s imagining things, overreacting, or just making things up. Katie struggles with these responses and ultimately blames herself, asking herself “Why couldn’t people take her seriously? Okay, so she hadn’t been acting like the kind of person people took seriously, since … since that day on the river. She’d give them that” (106, emphasis original).  Much like in The Dead Girlfriend, there’s a whole lot more going on than meets that eye and the truth must be revealed one layer at a time. Brownie’s sister Callie seems the most likely to be devastated enough to seek revenge for Brownie’s death, and to some degree, she did. Brownie’s ghostly voice came from a tape recorder, with the audio content coming from the family’s home answering machine following an altercation about their parents’ car and a birthday message Brownie had sent Callie the previous year. Callie hid in Katie’s room and in Nightmare Hall with the tape recorder, playing Brownie’s voice to torment Katie. Callie wanted some measure of revenge, telling Katie “It’s your fault my brother’s dead … he’s gone … gone … I’ll never see him again, and it’s your fault. But nothing ever happened to you! You weren’t punished. You just walked away. Somebody had to do something. So I did it, and I’m not sorry. Not sorry at all” (136-7, emphasis original). Callie wanted to make Katie pay and when this truth comes out, Katie is devastated, but also somewhat relieved … until it turns out that Callie was behind some of the terrifying occurrences, but not all of them. She didn’t write “GUILTY” on Katie’s car, she didn’t attack her in the attic in Nightmare Hall, and she didn’t try to drown her, so presumably there are (at least) two people out to get Katie. As Callie explains, “I was trying to punish you, not scare you” (140) and while it takes some time and thought for Katie to come to terms with what Callie’s saying, she ultimately has to accept that Callie is not the attempted murderer. The motivation becomes even more complicated when it turns out that Brownie didn’t drown in the river: his death was the result of a head wound, which everyone thinks he sustained when he crashed into a rock while being swept along by the current. This is a game-changer for Katie and her overwhelming sense of guilt, because her assumption has been that he didn’t have the strength to get back to shore because he spent it all saving her and couldn’t keep afloat. Once she knows he was hit in the head and likely knocked unconscious, she is able to accept that it really was just a terrible accident … except that of course, it wasn’t. There was a collision between Brownie’s head and a rock, but it was the result of someone intentionally hitting him in the head after he had fought his way to shore, then pushing his body back into the fast-moving current. Katie begins to suspect Brownie’s friend Davis when she discovers that Davis has a picture of her and Brownie. As far as Katie knows, there were only two copies of that particular picture: she has one and Brownie had the other in his wallet the day he went in the river, though when his wallet is recovered, the picture is missing. In the aftermath of Brownie’s death, Davis has been supportive, understanding, and as the weeks go by, expressing a romantic interest in Katie, which just might be a motive.  But again, this is only part of the story. When Katie goes to Allen’s room to talk to him, she finds the room empty and when she opens her closet door to borrow a sweater, she finds another copy of the picture (which apparently everybody has). But Allen’s copy is a little different: “A giant blowup of the picture of Brownie and Katie, smiling at each other … Katie’s own smiling, happy face, bigger than life, was staring back at her from the closet wall [… but] where Brownie’s dark brown eyes and curly hair and devilish grin should have been, Allen’s thin, serious face had been pasted into place” (160, emphasis original).  Apparently, everyone loves Katie, but Allen feels particularly proprietary in his affections, since he’s loved her the longest and he loved her when she was Kit. When Allen discovers Katie in his room, he tells her that Kit “was supposed to be with me when we got to college. Everyone knew that. My parent’s, Kit’s parents, our friends … maybe we were just pals in high school, but I knew it would be different when we got to college […] no more high school stuff … and I was sure she’d see me differently away from home. I figured she’d finally be ready to admit that we belonged together. Forever” (166). Katie flounders for a moment, uncertain “why he was talking about her in the third person. He kept saying, ‘Kit.’ But she was Kit” (166-7, emphasis original). Switching from Kit to Katie may have been her way of claiming ownership and agency of herself and her experience in a traumatic time, redefining herself by changing her name, but for Allen, this renaming has become something more akin to dissociation. As far as he is concerned, Kit and Katie are two different people, with two different personalities, and while he’s not even a bit sad that Brownie is dead, he can’t forgive Katie for killing Kit. That’s the murder for which he has decided Katie is guilty (as he wrote on her car) and that’s why she has to die.  When push comes to shove—almost literally, as Allen gets ready to force Katie off an old bridge over the river that nearly killed her once already—Katie saves herself by channeling Kit. She plays up the helpless girl he became obsessed with: “‘I can’t move,’ Katie said breathlessly, changing her voice, returning to Kit’s soft, unsure quality. ‘Allen, I can’t move!” She didn’t have to fake the terror in her words” (183). Hoh highlights the complexity of Katie’s identity negotiation, synthesizing components of these different parts of Katie’s past and present in the way she uses both names, all while keeping Katie firmly in control, foregrounding her strength and ingenuity. Katie plays into Allen’s desire to control and rescue her, drawing on a selective library of their shared memories to position him as her knight in shining armor, which allows her to save herself. When he sees through her performance, he tries to push her in the river, though by then he’s close enough that she can take him down with her. While Katie was terrified of the water the first time she found herself there, relying on Brownie to save her, this second time around, she saves herself. After she hit the water, “she began swimming frantically toward shore. The water was shallower now, quieter than it had been when the canoe had overturned. That seemed a million years ago now, another time, another place. She had been so frightened to find herself in the river. Paralyzed by fear, panicked into helplessness […] Not this time. There was no one here now, no one to help her but herself. Katie had to save Katie” (190, emphasis original). And she does. Davis and Callie are waiting for her on shore and when Katie disappeared, they put the pieces together and called the cops, who are ready to take Allen (who also survived the fall and the water) into custody. But Katie didn’t have to be rescued, she didn’t have to be pulled from the water, and she no longer has to doubt whether or not she has what it takes to fight and survive.  In both The Dead Girlfriend and Guilty, the protagonists’ deceased romantic partners are just one piece of the puzzle. Louisa and Brownie’s deaths cast long shadows over Jonathan and Katie, both in how they cope with that loss and in how others see them. But neither of those deaths are what they seem to be, with conflicting motives and narratives going on beneath the surface of which neither protagonist is aware. Dawn is certain that she and Jonathan belong together, while Allen has no doubt that he and Kit are meant to be, but these “love stories” are tales of obsession and fixation, one-way desires that remain invisible and unspoken even as they destroy the lives of those around them. In the end, it’s not so much the dead boyfriends and girlfriends that are the true horrors, but the rivals disguised as friends who made them that way.[end-mark] The post Dearly Departed: <em>The Dead Girlfriend</em> and <em>Guilty</em>  appeared first on Reactor.

News Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet of Wonders Michael Shannon Will Star in Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet of Wonders The remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari comes from the Dowdle brothers By Molly Templeton | Published on February 5, 2026 Screenshot: MGM Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: MGM Studios Michael Shannon’s fascinating career arc—from indies to playing General Zod himself—continues. The actor is now set to star in a remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari that comes from the creators of the series Waco (in which Shannon starred). John Erick Dowdle is set to write and direct Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet of Wonders; his brother Drew Dowdle will produce the film. The brothers have previously collaborated (usually with John Erick directing and both writing) on No Escape; As Above, So Below; and Quarantine. John Erick Dowdle also directed Devil, the film (co-written by M. Night Shyamalan) in which someone in a crowded elevator is the Devil. According to Variety, Shannon plays “the titular villain, Doctor Caligari, a traveling mesmerist who journeys from town to town with a sleepwalker under his control, leaving a trail of grisly murders in their wake. When a young woman’s boyfriend disappears mysteriously, she believes that the enigmatic Caligari is somehow responsible. The problem is — nobody believes her.” John Erick Dowdle said, “The idea of seeing him play the horrifying Doctor Caligari became an obsession for us. The trust and creative shorthand we’ve built together will allow us to push deeper and bolder as we reimagine this iconic German Expressionist classic for a modern audience. I couldn’t be more excited to bring this nightmare to life with him.” The original Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (pictured above), released in 1920, was a silent film directed by Robert Wiene. C.A. Lejeune’s 1923 review in The Guardian is fascinating: But that Robert Wiene, a stage actor of the Sturm group, whose avowed interest was the spreading of the gospel of expressionism through every medium, whether plastic or pictorial, and who cared for the kinema only in so far as it could further his ends more completely than the speaking stage – that this outsider, with no knowledge of studio customs, no reverence for studio traditions, should have turned out The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari seems a thing almost too strange for belief. Lejeune goes on to call the original “an almost flawless picture.” The Dowdles clearly have their work cut out for them.[end-mark] The post Michael Shannon Will Star in <i>Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet of Wonders</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Eragon Disney+’s Eragon Series Has Finally Found Its Showrunners Can there ever be too many dragons on TV? By Molly Templeton | Published on February 5, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Almost four years ago, Disney+ announced that a new live-action adaptation of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle was in development. Not just Eragon, the first book—previously adapted into a middling movie—but the whole four-book series, with Paolini on board as co-writer. And then we didn’t hear a peep more. But the show is still in the works at Disney, as it turns out, and now it’s got showrunners! Variety has the news that Todd Harthan and Todd Helbing have signed on as co-showrunners, with Harthan sharing the show creator title with Paolini. Todd Harthan co-wrote the 2007 movie Skinwalkers, but most of his work has been in TV, where he’s been a writer and showrunner on High Potential and The Resident, among other series. He also created the series Rosewood. Of the two Todds, Helbing has the stronger genre resume: He was a writer and showrunner on The Flash, and co-created Superman & Lois with Greg Berlanti (he was also showrunner for that series). His first writing credit, on IMDb, is an episode of Smallville. Helbing was also a writer and supervising producer on the second season of Black Sails, which is sort of funny: One of his Black Sails colleagues, co-creator Jonathan E. Steinberg, is now the co-creator of Disney’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Like Eragon, Percy was initially a poorly received film before becoming a Disney+ series. According to Variety, the logline for the Eragon series is: “When destiny selects an ordinary teenager to become the first Dragon Rider in over a hundred years, he must forge an unbreakable bond with his dragon, master ancient magic, and challenge the mad king who destroyed the Riders.” No casting or production timeline has been announced for Eragon.[end-mark] The post Disney+’s <i>Eragon</i> Series Has Finally Found Its Showrunners appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Star Trek: Starfleet Academy What Was Left Behind — Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s “Series Acclimation Mil” “I loved this episode and it made me cry.” By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on February 5, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share In 2005, in advance of the series finale of Enterprise, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga described the episode as a Valentine to the fans. The episode that actually aired was, um, not that, and since then, many Trek viewers have come to view that phrase with understandable cynicism. So let me start by saying that, unlike “These are the Voyages…” the latest episode of Starfleet Academy is a genuine Valentine to the fans in general and to Deep Space Nine in particular. Having said that, the episode put me on a massive roller coaster, and may do the same for you, so let me just tell you to be patient and go all the way through to the end (including the closing credits). To be clear: I loved this episode and it made me cry. Keep that in mind as you read on. The roller coaster started upward when I learned of the episode’s title. Series Acclimation Mil, or SAM, is one of my favorite characters on the show. Magnificently inhabited by Kerrice Brooks, SAM is that quintessential Trek character, the unique outsider who is trying to understand the human condition. It’s the role played by Spock, Data, Odo, the EMH, Seven of Nine, T’Pol, Saru, and T’Lyn. SAM has the added entertainment value of being a teenager who was only created recently by the Kasq, a species of holograms. We learn a lot about the Kasq in this episode, including that they were originally created as a subject species by organics, but at some point the organics went away and the holograms took over. This episode focuses entirely on SAM, showing her attempts to integrate—and also the pressure being put on her by the folks back home (in the form of a non-corporeal and non-hominid hologram voiced by the great Chiwetel Ejiofor). Then the episode started, and we see SAM being pressured by the Kasq to take a class on Confronting the Unexplainable, and one of the unexplainable things is Benjamin Sisko, who has never been seen since he went to the fire caves on Bajor to stop the Pah-Wraiths in “What You Leave Behind.” Did he die in the caves or did he remain with the Prophets, or what? The image of Sisko on the screen doesn’t show his face. We later find out that the Bajorans forbid images of Sisko’s face for religious reasons. At this point, the roller coaster goes down. Avery Brooks (no relation to the actor who plays SAM) forced the producers of DS9 to make it clear that Sisko intended to return, not that he’d remain in the wormhole/Celestial Temple forever, and particularly that the one of the best fathers in science fiction television wouldn’t abandon his pregnant wife. The image of a Black man abandoning his family is not one that sat well with Brooks, nor should it have. The fact that they didn’t show his face indicated to me the possibility that they were unable to secure Brooks’ cooperation or get his permission to use his likeness. To be fair, it also indicated the possibility that they just didn’t ask. Indeed, in the post-finale DS9 fiction that Simon & Schuster published from 2001-2021, Sisko did return just in time for the birth of his daughter, in the 2003 novel Unity by S.D. Perry. (Your humble reviewer contributed several works of fiction to that post-finale DS9 slate.) So before the credits rolled, I’m already pissed off. Then we get through the credits, and I see who has written this: Kirsten Beyer and Tawny Newsome. Now the roller coaster’s slowly starting to creep back up. Beyer is a veteran Trek novelist (and also, full disclosure, a friend of your humble reviewer), who was brought into the stable of Trek fictioneers by Marco Palmieri, also the editor of that selfsame post-finale DS9 fiction. Newsome is a devoted fan, and also the actor who voiced (and in one episode of Strange New Worlds, portrayed physically) Beckett Mariner on Lower Decks, and is also a woman of color. So I had hope. SAM feels an immediate affinity for Sisko, because she, too, is an emissary. However, we’re already up to midterms, and joining the Confronting the Unexplainable class would be difficult. In fact, the class’s professor, Isla, who presents as Cardassian (and is played by Newsome), says it’s too late to sign up. But if she can solve the mystery of Sisko, she’ll let SAM teach the class. So SAM digs in. She tries to learn everything she can about Sisko, including visiting the Sisko Museum in Louisiana. This being the thirty-second century, she doesn’t have to go there, because a virtual version of the museum can be set up in a room of the Academy. At one point, she calls up a recording of Sisko’s son Jake giving a talk—and the roller coaster shoots right up because that’s Cirroc Lofton! They actually got Lofton to play Jake once again—and in a lovely touch, he’s wearing a Bajoran earring! He talks about how much he loves his father and what a great father he was and other nifty stuff. SAM also makes some missteps along the way, like going to the Academy’s Bajoran Club and making a pig’s ear out of querying them about a major religious figure. But she also gloms onto one very important part of Sisko: food. Isla pushes her in this direction by talking about tomatoes in gumbo, as opinion is divided on the subject. (It’s traditionally Cajun gumbo versus Creole gumbo, though that isn’t mentioned specifically. On the other hand, that particular distinction may have faded over the course of the next two thousand years. On the third hand, which we’ll borrow from Arex or Kelzing, it is Sisko’s Creole Kitchen, and Creole is the tradition that uses tomatoes, which is what Sisko did.) Since SAM can’t consume food, she instead prepares a mess of food from Sisko’s Creole Kitchen for her fellow cadets—who, of course, love it. Jay-Den’s description is my favorite: “My mouth is on fire—and I never want it to go out,” which is about the highest praise you can give to Creole food. She also wants to go to the Launching Pad—which doesn’t exist anymore centuries later, but there’s another bar on the same location called the Academy. SAM wants to go there because Sisko did, and famously got into a fight with a Vulcan there (as detailed in “Take Me Out to the Holosuite”). Caleb even is able to mess about with her source code so she can be drunk (with the added benefit of allowing her to be “dialed back” to sober afterward). She’s a hilarious drunk, and of course, a bar fight eventually breaks out between the Academy cadets and the War College cadets. (There’s a fabulous cameo by drag queen Jackie Cox as the bartender, and I really hope this isn’t a one-off, as I’d love to see her as a recurring character.) There’s a lovely scene in sickbay after that when SAM asks the EMH if he knew Sisko. He didn’t—which tracks, as Voyager didn’t return home until after Sisko went into the Celestial Temple—but he did meet Jake, and says he was a fabulous author. (Since the EMH is something of an author himself, as seen in “Author, Author” and other places, this is a nice touch.) The EMH also says he’s never read Jake’s most famous work, Anslem, which was apparently never published. (In the alternate future of “The Visitor,” the book was published; in the mainline timeline he started it in “The Muse.” This episode reveals that anslem is the Bajoran word for father.) Finally, Isla decides to give SAM a gift: a bound copy of Anslem that was apparently entrusted to her. SAM devours it, and then also interacts with a hologram of Jake. It’s not clear whether or not this hologram is an integrated feature of the bound book or SAM hallucinating or what. But it doesn’t matter, as the conversation itself is glorious. Jake talks about how his father did things his own way. The Prophets told him that if he married Kasidy Yates, he’d only know sorrow (as seen in “Penumbra”), but he went ahead and married her anyhow (in “Til Death Do Us Part”). At this point, the roller coaster shoots upward. Because it’s right there in the prophecy he was given in “Penumbra.” If he never returns from the Celestial Temple, that’s the sorrow he’ll always know, that he abandoned his pregnant wife. Is it a perfect solution? No, but it’s one that works with what’s been established, and at least retroactively justifies the ill-thought-out decision made in 1999. The roller coaster levelled off earlier in the episode when the computer gives Sisko’s background. I was wondering how this episode, written by two women (a gender not at all represented on DS9’s writing staff), would address the fact that Sisko was the product of a rape. As established in “Image in the Sand” and “Shadows and Symbols,” the Prophets possessed a woman named Sarah, paired her off with Joseph Sisko, and they had Benjamin. The Prophets stopped possessing her after Sisko turned one, and she left them. The computer presentation here, however, says that Sarah was both human and Prophet, which is not what was established, though it retcons away the rape, kind of. At least they made an effort, but I wish the episode had confronted that head-on, because the difficulties of being an emissary is the heart of the episode. The pressure being put on SAM by the Kasq back home is tremendous, to the point where they want to summon her home and go back to avoiding organics like the plague. It’s very hard for them to even consider trusting organics again. The problematic nature of Sisko’s birth could have been addressed front and center as another issue, especially since SAM was also created by outside forces to fulfill a particular function. SAM feels the pressure of her mission in every photon. She doesn’t want to leave the Academy, as she’s made friends here, and she really feels she can learn what the folks home want, but she needs more time, and she needs to do it her way. Eventually, she tells the Kasq off and tells them to leave her alone and let her do her job. She also realizes something: she found nothing about tomatoes or gumbo in any of her research. So how did Isla know about it? For that matter, how’d this Cardassian woman wind up with a unique book? First Isla brushes her hair back to show the Trill spots that indicate that she’s got at least one other species in her ancestry, then reveals her full name of Isla Dax. “Benjamin would have liked you,” she tells SAM in a vocal intonation that’s right out of Terry Farrell (and the earlier tomato conversation was right out of Nicole deBoer). “He loved people who got in trouble for the right reasons.” Yes, it’s another legacy character. Yes, it’s self-indulgent. Yes, the Dax symbiont should be on its last legs at this point. (Something the writers were fully cognizant of in Discovery’s “Jinaal.”) But I’m totally willing to forgive it, because I love the idea of Dax still being around and still guarding her friend’s legacy. Every performance in this episode is magnificent, particularly Lofton’s, but it’s Brooks as SAM who owns it. So many wonderful touches, from her learning the theremin (for reasons that are wonderfully multifaceted) to the fact that she has a different greeting for each of her friends among the cadets (my favorite is Ocam’s). Director Larry Teng did a lovely job by showing us SAM’s POV in many scenes, with little drawings and diagrams and notes on her thoughts (starting with her crossing out the “A CBS STUDIOS PRODUCTION” title and replacing it with “A STORY ABOUT ME”) as she provides a voiceover throughout. At the episode’s end, we learn that the voiceover is SAM talking to Sisko, wherever he might be. And then there’s a magnificent voiceover from Avery Brooks, a colloquy on love that is the perfect coda to the episode, and which they absolutely could not have done without his permission. Which shoots the roller coaster straight up into orbit and stays there. (Also: look at the cloud formation over San Francisco at the very end. Trust me.) The closing credits start with “Thank you, Avery,” and then plays, not the theme for this show, but DS9’s theme music. I haven’t said anything about the B-plot, which is another attempt by Ake to get Kelrec to trust her, in this case by assisting him with a diplomatic mission, aided by the EMH and Reno. Mostly, it’s an opportunity for more Felix-and-Oscar scenes with Raoul Bhaneja and Holly Hunter and for Tig Notaro and Robert Picardo to be amusing, both of which are fun things, and which are pretty much just there to justify Hunter’s place at the top of the opening credits (she does have a scene with SAM that mentions her time on Bajor, but that’s it as far as her involvement with the A-plot). It’s harmless fluff. And yes, it’s a Valentine to the fans, and a damn good one. And yes, I cried. Happily.[end-mark] The post What Was Left Behind — <i>Star Trek: Starfleet Academy</i>’s “Series Acclimation Mil” appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations Five Sci-Fi Short Stories Told Through an Alien POV Clever, compelling stories filtered through a distinctly non-human consciousness By Lorna Wallace | Published on February 5, 2026 Image: Uninteneded Concept [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Uninteneded Concept [via Unsplash] One of the things I love most about science fiction is the space it provides for writers to stretch their imaginations. Aliens are a prime example of this. Sure, there are many sci-fi stories that are full of beings that are essentially humans but with blue skin or pointy ears, but every so often a writer will conjure up an otherworldly creature that feels truly alien. I find it particularly interesting to read from the perspective of such an extraterrestrial for two reasons. Firstly, it’s fascinating being placed into the consciousness of a being that sees and experiences the world in a totally different way to humans. Secondly, it can sometimes provide an outside perspective from which to view humanity, highlighting just how strange we ourselves are as organisms. Below are five such short stories that adopt an alien point of view. “The Monster” by A.E. van Vogt (1948) Enash and his fellow crew members land on Earth as part of a reconnaissance mission. Their species, the Ganae, have a rapidly growing population so they’re constantly searching the universe for planets to colonize. When they touch down on Earth (well, a far-future version of it), they find that all of the animals—including humans—are long dead. But before claiming the Earth as their own, the invading aliens need to know whether the planet itself had something to do with humankind’s demise (and that therefore might be a threat to them too). They’ve cracked the technology for resurrection, so they head to a museum where they can speak to humans throughout history in an effort to understand what happened. This backfires on them in spectacular fashion. Although the Ganae aren’t the most alien of all the aliens on this list, this role-reversed first contact story is still intriguing—in large part thanks to seeing how humanity has developed. Some of the ideas are admittedly a bit silly, but I think that just adds to the fun. “Odd Attachment” by Iain M. Banks (1982) “Odd Attachment” is told from the perspective of a large plant-like alien called Fropome. He begins the story lamenting the fact that the female plant he’s in love with doesn’t pay him any attention. He’s grasping at straws in his lovesick state, so when he sees what he describes as a “big seed pod” (i.e. a human spaceship) descend from the sky, he takes it as a sign from the universe that she actually does love him. Fropome is perplexed by the alien that comes out of the pod, but his thoughts are still dominated by his unrequited love, leading to a rather careless first encounter with humankind. Not only is it entertaining to view a human being through a sentient plant’s eyes, but this story also has a darkly funny ending. “They’re Made Out of Meat” by Terry Bisson (1991) For a story that is far more about humans than it is aliens, check out “They’re Made Out of Meat,” which can be read in just a few minutes. The entire story is comprised of a conversation between two aliens who have come across Earth. They’re utterly shocked to discover that, as the title suggests, humans are made out of meat. The physical form of the two extraterrestrials isn’t described, but given how horrified they are by humans, they certainly aren’t meat-based. This hilarious short story is likely to make you very aware of your own body and how strange it is. Plus, the ending provides one possible answer to the Fermi paradox—the discrepancy between the likelihood of extraterrestrial life being out there and at the same time, our complete lack of evidence for such life. “The Things” by Peter Watts (2010) “The Things” is a retelling of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) from the POV of the Thing itself (okay… I’ll now try to limit my use of the word “thing”). We soon learn that the Thing extraterrestrial biomass is just as disgusted by humans as we are by it. From our perspective, it’s a body horror nightmare that, by assimilating us, erases our individual identities. From its perspective, we’re isolated beings and assimilation—or in its own words, “communion”—is a pleasurable feeling of completeness. Finding ourselves in the head of an otherworldly creature that thinks that the violent joining of cells is good, actually, is exactly as disconcerting as it is fascinating. While Carpenter’s film offers a buffet of horror delights, Watts’s short story is far more sharply focused on existential terror. It is possible to read this story without having seen The Thing, but I do think it’s more rewarding to be familiar with the human perspective first (plus it’s an incredible movie!). “We Have a Cultural Difference, Can I Taste You?” by Rebecca Ann Jordan (2016) This short story is set at an intergalactic school where the student population is comprised of an eclectic mix of beings from many different planets. But even at a school that is as accepting of differences as this one, Filo/Gee doesn’t really fit in. Most of the students are bipeds, while Filo/Gee is an amoeba-like being (although a fair bit bigger than Earth’s tiny amoebas) who experiences the world via sound and taste. The latter sense works best when they fully absorb objects into their gelatinous body, but that doesn’t go down so well with some of the other students. The story is a bit heartbreaking at times—with Filo/Gee being misunderstood and mistreated by pretty much everyone at the school, students and staff alike—but it’s ultimately an uplifting tale about overcoming differences. Please feel free to share your own recommendations of stories told from an alien perspective—whether they’re short stories (like the ones above) or full-length novels (like the ones on this list!).[end-mark] The post Five Sci-Fi Short Stories Told Through an Alien POV appeared first on Reactor.