In 1970, the US Air Force gets documented proof of alien UFO attacks. These aliens wear red space suits and breath a green liquid, which makes their faces green. They mutilate their victims - harvest organs. Several recovered alien bodies have been found to have Human organs implanted, but we have no idea why. The United Nations agree to form an international organization to combat this new threat - to be called SHADO - Supreme Headquarters, Alien Defence Organisation - and to be headed by Colonel Ed Straker, USAF. His boss, and the holder of the purse strings, is General Henderson.
    Ten years later, SHADO is fully operational and headquartered beneath a London film studio - to the outside world, Straker is head of Harlington-Straker Studios, a small independant film studio that puts out bad documentary films and sappy serials. But beneath the Studio, is SHADO HQ, where Straker is Commander. His Colonels are Alec Freeman, Ed's oldest friend and former RAF pilot; Paul Foster, a hot-headed former test pilot; and Virginia Lake, an accomplished scientist.
    There is a Moon Base, where all the women inexplicably wear purple wigs. When one of the Colonels is not present, command of Moon Base usually falls to Lt Gay Ellis. With her on the Moon is Lt Nina Barry and Lt Harrington. Marc Bradley, is an Interceptor pilot. (Interceptors are small space ships which carry one big huge missile each to attack the Ufoes)
    There are SkyDivers - submarines with small attack planes attached. The planes can be launched from underwater. Captain Peter Carlin and Captain Lou Waterman are SkyDiver Captains. Keith Ford and Ayshea are communications officers at HQ. Dr Doug Jackson is in charge of SHADO Medical. SID is an orbiting satellite that first detects incoming Ufoes.
    Web sites:
My UFO site
UFO Home Page

    Forever Knight is centered around the character of Nick Knight, a Toronto police detective who also happens to be a vampire. Brought across (made a vampire) almost 800 years ago, Nick now desires to be mortal again. He works as a Homicide Detective, hoping to, in a small way, "repay society for his sins."
    [In season one,] he works the night shift while his "partner," Detective Don Schanke, handles the same cases by day. Their boss is Captain Stonetree.
    [In season two,] he and his partner, Schanke, are at a new Precinct and both work the night shift together. Schanke does not know of his partner's true "condition." As far as he knows, Nick simply has a severe sun allergy, which is so severe, in fact, that he may be kicked off the force if their superiors found out just how extreme it is; so Schanke keeps his secret - ostensibly from their boss, Captain Amanda Cohen.
    [In season three,] Schanke and Captain Cohen are killed and Nick gets a new partner - Tracy Vetter, the Commissioners daughter. Captain Joe Reese has assigned Tracy to work with Nick in the hopes that Nick can keep the Commissioner's daughter safe. Tracy knows of vampires - she is in love with Vachon, who was once a Spanish Conquistador and is now a vampire, but she doesn't know about Nick, and Nick wants to keep it that way.
    Doctor Natalie Lambert, the local coroner, is one of the few mortals who does know of Nick's true nature, and she is trying to "cure" him. She thinks she loves him, but, of course, Nick could never love her back without destroying her.
    Among the vampire community, Janette is the only one Nick can truly trust. She and Nick spent 95 years together before his love for her became too much and she left him. She now owns a fashionable night club called the "Raven," which is a favorite hang out for vampires of all kinds. (In season three, she packs up and leaves town to start life anew - she doesn't tell Nick where she is going and she leaves the club in LaCroix's hands.)
    Lucian Lacroix is the vampire who brought both Janette and Nick across. He is a very old and very powerful immortal who tries to get Nick to simply drop his burden of guilt and accept what he is: an immortal killer of men. His attempts at instruction, however, are sometimes less than subtle. He is often considered the nasty one on the show; but he loves Nick, none the less, and he does still have human feelings somewhere deep down in his jaded heart. He hosts a night time radio talk show, billed as "The Night Crawler." (In season three, he broadcasts his show from The Raven and we discover that LaCroix was a Roman General in Pompeii when his mortal daughter brought him across the day Mount Vesuvius erupted.)
    Web sites:
My FK Site

First Season Cast | Second Season Cast | Third Season Cast

    Roj Blake is a political prisoner of The Federation - a corrupt totalitarian empire ruled from Earth. He is brainwashed, but later breaks free of the psycho manipulation (actually by going insane). So he is framed for a heinous crime (child molesting) and sentenced to a penal planet, Cygnus Alpha. On the way there, he meets other prisoners - Kerr Avon, the computer wizard, who ALMOST embezzeled 20 million credits from the Federation Banking system; Jenna Stanis, the top pilot who got caught smuggling; Vila Restal, the timid, but master thief; Olag Gan, the gentle giant who killed the man who killed his wife. They steal an advanced alien spacecraft which they call the Liberator and later pick up Cally, an alien (Aronar) resistance fighter with telepathic abilities, and bringing the crew to number 7 is Zen, the ship's computer. Together, they run around trying to thwart the Federation. When Gan is killed, the crew get hold of ORAC, an obnoxious super computer, to bring the crew back to 7.
    Hot on their trail is Servalan - Supreme Commander, and later, President, a beautiful and ruthless woman; and Space Commander Travis, a brute with mechanical eye and hand (wounds caused by Blake).
    At the end of season two(?), there is a great intergalactic war with the Andromedans and the Federation is all but destroyed - most of their army wiped out and troops scattered everywhere. Travis is killed (by Avon) - he had betrayed the whole Human Race to the Andromendans. The Liberator is badly damaged and life support fails. Everyone must evacuate until Zen can repair it enough to run life support again. Blake and Jenna are lost. Dayna Mellanby, a young woman with a penchant for weaponry of all kinds; and Del Tarrant, a former Federation space cadet-turned smuggler, then join the crew.
    When the Liberator is destroyed and Cally is killed, they acquire a ship called Scorpio and Soolin, a female commando, joins the crew, along with the ship's computer, Slave.
    Avon gets progressively more and more insane as the show goes on (in my opinion) and spends most of the last season looking for Blake. He finds him in the last episode.
    Web sites:
My B7 Site
Blake's 7 at Hermit

    A film series. In Planet of the Apes, four astronauts (well three, really, as the fourth - the only woman - has died during flight, her cryogenic chamber apparently malfunctioned) land on a planet controlled by apes. The humans are mute and subservient to the superior apes. The Gorillas are militant - they comprise the army; The Chimps are pacifistic scientists; and the Oragutangs are the political leaders.
    The astronauts: Colonel George Taylor, Landon, Dodge, and I can't recall the woman's name . The apes: Dr. Zira and her mate Cornelius, Chimps; Dr. Zaius, Oragnutang. Nova is the human Taylor falls in love with.
    There was also a TV series based upon the films, but I never watched that, so can't help you there.

    Architect David Vincent witnesses a UFO landing while driving down a dark country road one night. He knows aliens have landed and that they can make themselves look human. He tries to tell people about it, but no one believes him. The authorities go after him because they think he's a nut and the aliens are after him because he knows their secret. For a while, you could tell who was an alien, because for some reason, they couldn't bend their little pinky fingers, but they later fix that problem ....
    Opening sequence: "The Invaders - Alien beings from a dying planet. Their destination : The Earth. Their purpose : To make it *their* world. David Vincent has seen them. For him it began one lost night on a lonely country road, looking for a short-cut that he never found. It began with a closed deserted diner, and a man too long without sleep to continue his journey. It began with the landing of a craft from another galaxy. Now, David Vincent knows that the Invaders are here, that they have taken human form. Somehow he must convince a disbelieving world that the nightmare has already begun."
    From the Invaders Home Page :
    How to recognise an alien

• They have no pulse or heartbeat
  
• They need to regenerate themselves at regular intervals otherwise they die
  
• When they die, they incinerate, leaving virtually no trace
  
• Some of them have a mutated fourth finger
  
• When they are wounded, they don't bleed
  
• Pure Oxygen is fatal to them
  
• They have no emotions
  

    This show recounts the exploits of a team from the OSIR - Office of Scientific Investigation and Research: a private organisation that investigates possible paranormal incidents. Frank Elsinger is the enigmatic head of the organisation - one is never sure just what he's up to and he always seems to have a hidden agenda. The Team Leader is Matt Praeger, who is somewhat of a maverick and doesn't pretend to like Elsinger. Anton Hendricks is the team physician, Peter Axon is the paranormal enthusiast, and Lindsay Donner is the team whiner (all right - that's unfair - I think she's a chemist or something). Also along for the ride are Lennox Cooper, the nerdy biologist, Claire Davison the Medical Examiner, and Ray Donahue, the hard boiled head of security. Michael Kelly, a rather strange, heavy drinking individual who may be a former OSIR member, is a friend of Praegers. He sometimes gives Praeger hot tips and Elsinger doesn't like the team having any contact with Him.
    Web Page:
The Official Site.

    This series is about an elite government Biohazard Crisis Team combatting the tiny terrorists called viruses and biochemical warfare. Dr. Daniel Cassian is the Director - cool, aloof, seemingly with his own agenda, he is not above using his team as bait; but when the going gets tough, his heart is in the right place. Dr. Edward Marcase is the head Virologist - headstrong and fiercely independant, he often has a problem with authority and working as a team. He survived an Ebola outbreak as a child which killed both his parents. Dr. Kimberly Shiroma is also an accomplished Virologist - her fiance was killed by Ebola while working with Marcase, who was immune. Michael Hailey is the Team Security - he's military, he's tough, and he knows how to get things done. Later, Marcase and Shiroma get stuck in Zimbabwe and so Cassian recruits Neuropathologist, Dr. Brian Taft to the team.

    This 1961 film starred Gregory Peck as Keith Mallory and Anthony Quinn as Andrea Stavro. During WWII, a six man commando team is sent to destroy the heavy-duty guns that the Germans have deployed on the Aegean island of Navarone.

    This NBC show is about Jarod - a Pretender. He was taken by The Centre as a young boy and kept ... for research. He's a genius and was used to solve problems. Many of his scenerios have since been used for less than honorable purposes. He has escaped from The Centre and is searching for his family. All he has is a photo of his mother - he was told his family was killed in a plane crash, but that's not true. While he's searching, he helps others with various problems. He can become anyone or anything he wants to - a doctor one day, a truck driver the next and an FBI agent the day after that.
    The head of The Centre is Mr. Parker, although it has been suggested that he answers to yet a higher power. His daughter, Miss Parker, heads up the search for Jarod - The Centre wants him back. She used to play with Jarod as a child growing up at the Centre. When she was a little girl, her mother supposedly shot herself, but evidence suggests she may have been murdered. On her team is Dr. Sydney Green, the man who handled Jarod - the only father figure Jarod has ever had. Jarod phones him quite often. In fact, he phones Miss Parker a lot too, and drops her clues as he finds them regarding her mother's death. Broots is the techno wizard. He's a little nerdy, but he has a little girl to raise on his own and Jarod respects him a great deal for the love and affection he shows the little girl.
    Also in the picture, are Brigitte - the slimeball who tried to kill Mr. Parker in one episode, but married him in another *shudder*. And Mr. Lyle, who turns out to be Miss Parker's brother. He's a bit of a lunatic. I can't quite recall if they ever explained how or why he got seperated from the family, but he grew up in an abusive foster home and ended up murdering his best friend at like, age 12 and making it appear the body was his own and framed his foster father for the murder - the guy is still in jail. Anyway, he lost a thumb (can't recall which hand) due to a botched deal with an oriental syndicate - can't recall if it was Japanese or Chinese. ANYWAY! He's evil, but starting to grow on me. (Well, he *is* cute). And Mr. Raines - a really evil slimeball. He has done evil evil experiments on kids at The Centre - one of which, left poor little Angelo deeply troubled for life. He crawls around the ductwork at the Centre. Raines has some sort of heart condition and wears oxygen all the time. Everyone pretty much hopes he'll drop dead any time now ....

    Based on the film Stargate, it stars Richard Dean Anderson as Colonel Jack O'Neill, commander of SG-1. Doctor Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) broke the code and discovered how to activate the stargate, which creates a temporary wormhole and travels to other worlds. He and Jack were with the first team to travel through it to Abydos, where they destroyed the Goa'uld System Lord Ra. Jackson married Sharre and stayed behind on Abydos and Jack returned to Earth, secure in the knowledge that Ra was dead. Years later, another Goa'uld named Apophis traveled to Earth through the stargate and the SGC was formed to deal with the alien threat. (Goa'ulds use Humans as hosts).
    So it was that Captain (later promoted to Major) Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) and then Teal'c (Christopher Judge) joined Jack and Daniel to become SG-1, premiere team of the SGC. General George Hammond is in command of the SGC. They've encountered many evil Goa'ulds, many different Human civilizations - made many enemies and many friends along the way. Chief among their allies are the Asgaard - Thor is a close personal friend of Jack O'Neill. Daniel Jackson received a fatal dose of radiation and ascended to a higher plane, but has since returned to mortal life. He doesn't know how or why. While he was gone, Jonas Quinn (Corin Nemec) took his place with SG-1.
    Later, Hammond retires and O'Neill is promoted to General and takes over command while Colonel Cameron Mitchell (Ben Browder) takes over SG-1. Still later, O'Neill retires (or does he take over command of Homeland Security? I don't recall) and General Hank Landry (Beau Bridges) takes over command of the SGC. And later still, Carter is promoted to Colonel and sent to take over command of Atlantis, but that's another show called Stargate Atlantis.
    The only Web Page you really need:
Gateworld
My Stargate Site

    A TV Mini-series starring Sam Neill as the intrepid wizard, Merlin. In this version of the story, Queen Mab creates Merlin as a wizard in order to preserve the old ways of magic, but she has a tendency towards evil that really ticks off Merlin and sends him off in search for revenge against her. Instead of preserving the old ways, Merlin ends up destroying them. It's a must see, so if you haven't yet, go see it! (The Merlin in my fanfic is also partially based on the books by Mary Stewart).
    Web Page:
The Most Magical Adventure of All Time

    Xena began as a guest character on Hercules. She used to be an evil warlord, but Herc and Gabrielle changed her tune. These shows take place in Ancient Greece and the Greek Gods play a big part, so we have Zeus, Hera, Ares, Aphrodite - the whole clan. Herc hangs with a guy named Iolaus - he's cute. He used to be a thief, but I guess Herc changed his ways? Salmonius was Herc's "official biographer" for a while - he's more or less a schemer - always looking for a get rich quick scheme. Autolycus is the very sexy King of Thieves. Xena hangs (and bathes) with Gabrielle - she's cute too (grin). Joxer is a fumbling twit who's heart is in the right place - he's madly in love with Gabrielle. Meleager the Mighty is an aging hero.

    There are, I've heard, 73 Nero Wolfe novels written by the late Rex Stout. I hadn't read any of them when I wrote my story. But A&E made a series starring Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin which was a hoot and a half, so I had to read the books. I've only been able to find a few, but was pleasantly surprised to find that I had done a damn good job of recreating the style of the originals - due, in part, to how well adapted the series was - the show plays just like the books read - it's great. Shame it didn't last long.
    Nero Wolfe (Maury Chaykin) is a brilliant, but somewhat agoraphobic private detective who would much rather spend time with his precious orchids than with people. That's why he has Archie Goodwin (Tim Hutton) - his personal assistant, front man, body guard - smooth where Wolfe is fumbling; rough where Wolfe is sophisticated. and then there is the faithful cook, Fritz Brenner (Colin Fox), who has a long suffering old world attitude towards working with the excentric Nero Wolfe.
    Web Pages:
The Office of Nero Wolfe - Private Detective

    A series that ran from 1968 to 1970, which featured Robert Wagner as Alexander Mundy, a world class jewel thief who is released from prison in exchange for pulling specialized jobs for the SIA (Special Intelligence Agency). Robert Wagner was so dashing and adorable, for years I wanted to be a cat burglar. Fred Astaire played Al's father - another world class thief named Alistair Mundy. Noah Bain (Malachi Throne) and Wally Powers (Edward Binns) were Al's superiors at the SIA.
    Web Pages:
The Official Robert Wagner Site

    I've seen the show a few times, but was never a huge fan - check out these web sites for info:
ACK! I've lost my BATB bookmarks! Will find some sites and list them here .....