This is an award winning UK sci-fi space short film made Backyard Productions UK as part of the “Darkwave universe.”  Set in a world where rare crystals – called Starlight Crystals – make FTL flight possible, it shows that even with a low budget and actors working for free, you can still tell a damn good story.  I write about this because I really feel that this Darkwave setting REALLY needs to be written up as an RPG setting.  Someone really needs to approach these guys with the idea.

Every once in a while, you will find a gem on Youtube.com that is surprising. Of course, Youtube has had full length movies for a while. Recently I decided to explore the sci-fi selection and found a movie that interested me. It looked pretty cheesy but something about it peaked my interested. As it turns out, there was more to it than just a cheesy name.

Ice Planet (2001) is a movie pilot that was intended to be a series. Made by a team of Canadian and German producers, it starred a few actors I recognized and a few I did not. One part Star Trek: Voyager, one part Battlestar Galactica, and one part Stargate: Atlantis, this pilot had incredible potential and I am highly disappointed that it never made it as a series.

Browsing NetFlix again, I found a new sleeper sci-fi/post-apocalypse movie called The Colony. Starring some of my favorites like Bill Paxton and Laurence Fishburne, this movie had a great look, a great background but a fairly predictable and straightforward plot. It has some good concepts and execution wasn’t bad but for such an epic setting, it was a tad disappointing in story. But there is some inspiration in it.