News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Friday the 13th — Jason Takes the Oscars Plus: Yoshi bath bombs and one watches over the kākāpō’s nest By Molly Templeton | Published on March 13, 2026 Photo: UCLA Library Special Collections (via Wikimedia Commons) and Paramount Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: UCLA Library Special Collections (via Wikimedia Commons) and Paramount Pictures It’s nearly the ides of March. It’s nearly the spring equinox. It’s nearly spring, my northern hemisphere comrades. There are many ways to look at this. One is that it’s a great time to watch a lot of movies and TV and read just absolute piles of books before the weather gets nice and we begin to feel like we ought to perhaps do things in the outside, while the nice lasts. (If you are not one of these people, more power to you! I experience sunlight guilt like no one’s business.) There are many things to do in the inside this weekend. Yes, watching the Oscars is one of them. You could go to a scary movie called Undertone. You could read Rebecca Roanhorse’s new story collection, River of Bones, or Jenn Lyons’ Green and Deadly Things, both of which came out earlier this month. You could, of course, call your reps. But first, let’s talk about weird dates that people imbue with meaning! Hey, Hey, It’s Friday the 13th (Again) Today! Fun fact: If the year starts on a Thursday, there will be three Friday the 13ths that year: February, March, and November. (If a leap year starts on a Sunday, you get a different set of three.) If you don’t believe me, you can ask Wikipedia. I am personally familiar with Friday the 13th distribution because Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab always releases a 13 scent, and because tattoo shops like to do fun flash specials. Not that I have ever managed to score one of those. (Generally, though, I just like things that have superstitions around them. I also have a black cat. Also, paraskevidekatriaphobia is a cool word.) I am not so into Fridays the 13th as to overcome my horror-baby fears and watch any Friday the 13th movies, though I have it on good authority (see ed note below) that Friday the 13th Part VI is a good place to start, and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, despite its amusing title, should be skipped. The Friday the 13th prequel series Crystal Lake is still happening, after some bumps, and has even cast a lil’ Jason.  At any rate, I hope your day is lucky. Especially if you’re trying to get a tattoo. Editor’s Note: Mysterious masked editor here. If I had to break down the Friday the 13th franchise (my ultimate guilty pleasure franchise) into buckets rather than an impossibly difficult ranking, it would look like this:Stupid Fun Jason XFriday the 13th Part VII: The New BloodFreddy vs. Jason Honestly Kind of Boring Friday the 13th (with much due respect, especially to those last 20 minutes)Friday the 13th Part III (unless you watch it in 3D) Just Bad Jason Goes to Hell: The Final FridayFriday the 13th: A New BeginningFriday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes ManhattanFriday the 13th (2009) Genuinely Good Friday the 13th Part 2Friday the 13th: The Final ChapterFriday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives Part VI is what I recommend to people because it’s actually a meta comedy about the franchise. The Final Chapter is the definitive “prototypical” entry in the series. Part 2 is the sleeper masterpiece. Jason X is in space, so jot that down. You Could Watch the Oscars, or You Could Not This isn’t a big weekend for movies or new TV series (sorry to the horror movie I can’t watch and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II re-release) because it is the Oscars. The biggest! Night! In Hollywoooooood! “Night” begins at 4 pm Pacific time now, though. Just FYI. But if the threat and/or promise of a Bridesmaids reunion and assorted Marvel superheroes aren’t enough to make you want to tune in, there are other things to watch! I for one will be watching the first of four Kelly Reichardt movies at a local theater, because I love Kelly Reichardt, whose work has absolutely nothing to do with SFF, but you should watch it anyway. If you are the contrarian type, you could watch one or two of the films that people believe were snubbed by the Oscars. These include Hedda (Tessa Thompson in glamorous outfits, some murder; it’s on Prime) and Mickey 17 (Robert Pattinson playing clones, courtesy of the director of Parasite; it’s on HBO) and Wake Up Dead Man (it’s Rian Johnson, of course you want to watch it; it’s on Netflix). I am not going to recommend Wicked: For Good, because it wasn’t good, but some people did feel that the cast, costume designer, and production designer were snubbed, so maybe just being intensely on their sides will make it seem better? (Nothing is going to make those new songs seem better, though.) The Oscars are on ABC and Hulu. If you want to go that way. I will be mentally rooting for Sinners from the calm of my movie theater seat. A Very Strange and Wonderful Parrot Is Making a Comeback One of the first books I finished this year was Last Chance to See, by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. The 1990 travelogue was about the two of them venturing all over the world to see animals that were growing more and more rare—terribly rare, in some cases. Sometimes, when I finished a section, I would look up the animal in question. But sometimes that was too hard. One of the creatures Adams wrote about was the kākāpō, a truly delightful-looking parrot that only lives in New Zealand. When Adams went to look for them, there were only about 40 of them.  But things are looking up for the kākāpō—to a degree. Now there are more than 200. For the first time in years, they’re breeding. And one of them has a nest-cam. The Guardian covered the joy people from all over the world have been taking in the kākāpō cam. There are, if I am reading the timeline correctly, no chicks in the nest at present, but you can watch Rakiura the kākāpō groom, and snooze, and generally just be a delightful chonk of a parrot. And after reading Adams’ book, I find myself incredibly moved by all of this: the breeding season, the nest cam, the joy. It wasn’t the last chance after all. I only wish Adams were here to see them. But What Happens If You Drop a Yoshi Egg in the Bath? I generally think of myself as a grown-ass human who has a reasonable amount of willpower and cannot be swayed by foolish marketing tactics and tie-in products. Except there are times when I’m an absolute sucker (don’t talk to me about the loth-cat tee that doesn’t fit at all but I refuse to stop wearing it). And while I have not bought anything from Lush in a very long time, I just, like … need to drop a Yoshi egg in the bath. I need to have a Yoshi egg I can just hold. I love Mario games, but I adore the weirdness of the Yoshi’s Island games. Please. Just one little Yoshi egg. It has a surprise in it! Forget watching television. I want to watch the egg hatch. But there’s more! There’s Princess Peach’s crown soap and an extremely red shower gel and naturally an extremely green Luigi shower gel, too. Was somebody inspired by the Elphie/Glinda shower gels? Who’s to say. (I apparently missed the fact that there were also Wicked tie-in Lush products. I am weirded out by the Scarecrow scrub. But I also respect it.) I don’t even know what lip scrub is supposed to do, but I want it on principle. It has gold edible stars in it!!! How strong can a person be? Sorry. Got carried away. Am I actually sorry? I’m sorry if Yoshi egg bath bombs were not in your budget, either. This was not what I expected to be excited about today.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Friday the 13th — Jason Takes the Oscars appeared first on Reactor.

News Doctor Who Two Long-Lost Doctor Who Episodes Have Been Found; Co-Star’s Flabber Has Never Been More Gasted Many, many Who episodes remain missing. Check those closets! By Molly Templeton | Published on March 13, 2026 Screenshot: BBC Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: BBC Studios Two Doctor Who episodes that no one has seen since the 1960s have, astonishingly, turned up. Among the objects in the estate of an anonymous collector, whose films were donated to the charitable trust Film is Fabulous! after his death, were copies of two episodes that aired in the show’s third season. “The Nightmare Begins” and “Devil’s Planet” both originally aired in November 1965. In the 13-episode The Daleks’ Master Plan arc—written by Dalek creator Terry Nation—the first Doctor (William Hartnell) faced the Daleks as they planned to take over the galaxy. This storyline, according to the BBC, was “dark and gritty,” and was “ordered to be wiped.” (There were kind of a lot of deaths.) Apparently, neither Australia nor New Zealand would take the episodes, finding them too violent, and “without their buy-in, selling to other markets was not profitable.” So these episodes have never been seen outside the UK. (A third episode in the arc was found in 2004.) The two newly found episodes were apparently the gems in a collection that mostly included film of canals and trains. Possibly the funniest part of this story, though, is the fact that actor Peter Purvess, who played the Doctor’s companion Steven Taylor, was lured to a screening of the episodes “under false pretenses.” For unclear reasons, he was told he was going to do “interviews with the media about television in the 1960s.” Purvess, bless him, said, “My flabber has never been so gasted.” He also immediately had his eye on the future: “I’m absolutely thrilled and maybe I’ll [get] quite a few invites to conventions and various things.” Purvess was invited to the screening by Doctor Who historian Toby Hadoke, who said, “I’m a grown man and I’ve been wishing I could see ‘The Nightmare Begins’ since I saw the name on a list of missing episodes of Doctor Who 30 years ago. Forget Glastonbury, I think if you put on a screening of these tomorrow it would sell out in seconds.” A special screening is in fact taking place in London on April 4, which is the same day the episodes will arrive on BBC iPlayer. Seven episodes in this story arc are still missing; they’re among the 95 remaining lost Doctor Who episodes. Perhaps yet more will be found in the unlikeliest of places.[end-mark] The post Two Long-Lost <i>Doctor Who</i> Episodes Have Been Found; Co-Star’s Flabber Has Never Been More Gasted appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Outlander Outlander Actors Describe Latest Episode’s Brutal [REDACTED] Scene Reactor interviewed Sophie Skelton, Richard Rankin, and Izzy Miekle-Small about that unexpectedly violent moment in “Prophecies.” By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on March 13, 2026 Credit: Starz Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Starz Warning: This post contains spoilers for season eight, episode two of Outlander, “Prophecies.” Outlander’s second episode of season eight sees everyone back home on Fraser’s Ridge, grateful and happy to be all together once again. Things don’t stay that way for long (this is Outlander, after all), and soon a pleasant afternoon of picking berries sees a character get mauled to death by a bear. I had a chance to ask actors Izzy Miekle-Small, Sophie Skelton, and Richard Rankin what it was like to film that scene, both for them as actors and for their characters. “When I first read it, I thought, ‘Oh, how fun. I get to go and do a scene with all the women of Fraser’s Ridge, and we don’t get to do that very often, and [Caitríona Balfe, who plays Claire] was obviously directing, so it was feeling even more enhanced,’” Meikle-Small, who plays Rachel on the show, told me. Miekle-Small acknowledged it was a “very traumatic scene to watch” but said that the actors had fun filming it. “We got to hang out at a beautiful location with Caitríona directing, and we got to feel part of what these women’s day to day would be like, because we don’t often get to see the women of Outlander in the hum and drum of their life. It’s normally in the context of being quite dramatic or traumatic, and obviously this ends up being slightly traumatic, but I think it’s nice to see them just chatting and bonding.” Credit: Starz The scene was also a brutal welcome back into the 1700s for Brianna and Roger; particularly for Brianna who saw the bear attack firsthand. “I think just the reality of just not being able to protect people is definitely sinking in in that moment,” said Skelton, who plays Brianna. “And also… I think the last time that somebody died at her hand was probably Bonnet. And so I do think there’s maybe something in there as well, a little bit of flashback moments. But I think just seeing somebody mauled in front of your eyes when she’s been back in the comforts of the 20th century for a while just really cuts a fresh, deep wound.” Rankin’s Roger is there when the dying woman is brought back to the Fraser’s home. “It’s just a sad scene,” he said, adding that Roger “probably finds it quite hard to separate himself between his personal feelings there, as a member of the Ridge community, and being the minister [role] that he’s taken on, which was, I suppose, a conflict for him.” The sudden and tragic death is one of many in Outlander’s eight seasons. It’s also a reminder that life is tough in the 18th century, and that the characters we’ve come to know and love are likely to face more hardships before the series wraps up. New episodes of Outlander premiere on Starz every Friday.[end-mark] The post <i>Outlander</i> Actors Describe Latest Episode’s Brutal [REDACTED] Scene appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays aliens One More Reason the Aliens Might Be Avoiding Us Is the current location of our Solar System the reason no one’s coming to visit? By James Davis Nicoll | Published on March 13, 2026 Credit: NASA/JPL Comment 1 Share New Share Credit: NASA/JPL As previously noted1, there is as yet no unambiguous evidence of aliens. If there are aliens—which the evidence so far does not support, at all—they don’t seem to be anywhere in our neighbourhood. Why might that be? More importantly, which explanations haven’t been mentioned in my previous Tor.com/Reactor essays2? Could our current location be a sufficient reason to shun us, at least for the moment3? There might be a very good reason indeed. It goes by the innocuous name of the Local Bubble4. As anyone who has contemplated relativistic space travel knows, interstellar space is a hard vacuum, but it is not empty. The average density of the interstellar medium (ISM) is about half an atom per cubic centimetre (or if you don’t like fractional atoms, one atom per two cubic centimetres). In the Local Bubble, that density is 0.05 atoms per cubic centimetre (or one atom per twenty cubic centimetres). The Sun entered the Local Bubble about five million years ago. Because the Local Bubble is about a thousand light-years across, the Sun is still traversing the Local Bubble. Whether or not a rarified ISM is convenient or inconvenient for interstellar travel depends on the details of how starships might work5, and is beyond the scope of this essay. However, the process that created the Bubble depends on something that prudent aliens might want to avoid: our friend, the supernova. Supernovae are extremely energetic events which produce about as much energy as a galaxy. Side effects include enough neutrinos to deliver a lethal dose despite neutrinos’ miniscule interaction cross-section6, an impressive flood of electromagnetic radiation, and (thanks to the material ejected at high speed from the dying star) a shockwave propagating at up to 20,000 kilometres per second. That’s fast enough to cover the distance between the Earth and the Moon in less than 20 seconds. It’s what carved out the Local Bubble. Experts agree that you probably don’t want to be anywhere near a supernova. Sure, pretty lights and all, but those are hard to appreciate as one is being transformed into plasma. Further away, atmospheres are probably sufficient to protect against a direct radiation threat (unless the atmosphere is stripped away, in which case radiation probably isn’t your primary threat). The cost of that shielding might be an atmosphere transformed in ways inimical to life. Happily, while the effects of any given supernova reach across distances that are unimaginably vast on a human scale, they’re small potatoes on a galactic scale. You’d have to be very, very unlucky to be close enough to a supernova for it to destroy your ozone layer. Or alternatively, you could be a region where supernovae were for some reason unusually frequent. Any star-forming region will produce an assortment of stars ranging from a large number of small stars to a handful of massive stars. Any stars over eight solar masses will die in supernovae. The more massive the star, the shorter its life. What that means is shortly (on a cosmic scale) after a stellar nursery forms, there will be a brief but no doubt memorable flurry of supernovae. As the shockwaves expand, they will compress interstellar molecular clouds, triggering more star formation, resulting in more massive stars, and more supernovae. This won’t result in any sort of Known Space-ish apocalypse forcing us to relocate to the Andromeda Galaxy, but it is still not all that convenient. Earth seems to have been either lucky (if you’re a supernova fan) or lucky (if you are not) because evidence suggests a local supernovae peak dating back about two to three million years ago, for which we might credit the Scorpius-Centaurus Association, plus another one at six to nine million years ago, which might have been due to passing sufficiently close enough to the Orion OB1 stellar association as it carved out the Orion–Eridanus Superbubble. Since we’re here, it’s clear that the occasional flurry of supernova is no impediment to complex life or even technologically sophisticated civilizations. On the other hand, regions without supernovae must be even friendlier. Since it’s possible to predict supernovae millions of years in advance, why not avoid regions near stellar nurseries altogether? And if interstellar-capable civilizations do that, it’s no surprise we don’t see them around here. Of course, the above assumes a civilization whose planning timescales are on the order of hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Mayflies probably don’t need to worry about supernovae because even during flurries, the mean time between successive supernovae might be longer than the likely lifespan of such civilizations… but mayflies hardly seem likely to overcome the vast distances between the stars.[end-mark] No, I don’t feel like going through all 600+ pieces I’ve written for Reactor to link to previous articles on this subject. ︎The obvious explanation is that intelligent life is very rare and interstellar travel is difficult or functionally impossible. ︎Well, it could be the fact that the Sun is eight kiloparsecs from the centre of the Milky Way. That is, we are located out in the galactic sticks, where distances between stars are inconveniently large. But I’m looking for a more interesting reason. Also, close-packed stars have drawbacks that I will get into another time. ︎Astronomers are terrible at naming things. ︎Bussard ramjets can’t work (dang), but maybe there’s a way (handwaving here) to use the ISM as reaction mass. In that case, a thin ISM is a pain. On the other hand, maybe the ISM isn’t useful, and it’s just a source of radiation damage to starships. In that case, the thinner the ISM, the better. ︎Admittedly, if you’re close enough to get a fatal neutrino dose, you’re also close enough that the other supernova effects will almost immediately make lingering death from neutrino acute radiation injury an entirely academic matter. ︎The post One More Reason the Aliens Might Be Avoiding Us appeared first on Reactor.

News Starfleet Academy Why Nus and Anisha Won’t Return in Starfleet Academy Season 2 The Starfleet Academy team still hope to bring Paul Giamatti and Tatiana Maslany back for a hypothetical third season By Matthew Byrd | Published on March 12, 2026 Photo Credit: Miller Mobley/Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Photo Credit: Miller Mobley/Paramount+ This post contains spoilers for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Season 1 Starfleet Academy just finished its debut season, but the show’s cast and crew are already talking about what’s ahead. And in a series of recent interviews, we learned that Nus (Paul Giamatti) and Anisha (Tatiana Maslany) will not appear in Starfleet Academy season 2.  “No, not in season 2,” says Star Trek Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman in an interview with TVInsider regarding whether Giamatti’s Nus will return. “There’s nothing we want more than to bring Paul back, and there’s nothing Paul wants more than to come back, so we are going to figure that out in season 3.” Giamatti did previously say (spoil, really) that he won’t be returning for season 2 but would be very interested in doing so in the future should the opportunity arise. Specifically, he noted that Nus is still alive (another spoiler at the time) at the end of the show’s first season and that “something could be done with him.” It really does seem to come down to immediate opportunities. As Starfleet Academy showrunner Noga Landau tells TVInsider, Nus’ arc and his spiritual relationship with Holly Hunter’s Captain Nahla come to a pretty definitive stop in season 1 that ends with Nus’ imprisonment. So, it seems like they simply don’t have anything more for the character to do in the next season relative to the bigger story they are trying to tell. Kurtzman goes on to explain that Anisha is in a similar situation, though there is a more specific story reason why the character isn’t coming back right away. “We still have plans for Anisha, and we’d love to bring her back,” Kurtzman says. “But that didn’t, I think, instinctively feel like a story that wanted to, just the search for mom, go beyond one season.” In an interview with Collider, Kurtzman elaborates that he believes Nus and Anisha’s storylines are ultimately “not complete.” He also reiterates that he’d love to bring them back and that they “certainly have plans for that.” The wording of all of that is quite interesting in the context of bigger things going on with Star Trek, Starfleet Academy, and Paramount. As Paramount looks to acquire Warner Bros. as part of a massive and incredibly controversial deal, the future of Star Trek remains uncertain. Many things will need to be reexamined as Paramount looks towards its future, and it’s not clear how Star Trek fits into that future. In a recent interview with TrekMovie, Alex Kurtzman stated that he has had “conversations about the future of Star Trek” and that he has received “nothing but support.” Kurtzman later adds that the Star Trek projects he is discussing with Paramount and its affiliates include “new shows” and “the shows we already have.” But as it stands, Starfleet Academy has not been approved for a third season. So while it seems like there is theoretically room for Nus and Anisha in Kurtzman’s plans and hopes for the future of the show, the talk of them potentially coming back in season 3 remains merely a nice idea barring a more substantial update. [end-mark] The post Why Nus and Anisha Won’t Return in <i>Starfleet Academy</i> Season 2 appeared first on Reactor.