Most of the people interested in seeing Life, the astronaut thriller out on March 24, probably have certain expectations based on the movie’s familiar premise: human beings encounter extraterrestrial organism, terrifying things ensue, just as in Alien, Predator and other classics. But while that most basic plotline does describe what happens—Life is the smartest, sharpest version of man vs. ET to come along in a long while.

Life happens almost entirely on the International Space Station, opening with a crew of specialists from Japan, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States preparing to receive a sample of a microscopic lifeform unearthed on Mars. One of the best plot beats comes early on in director Daniel Espinosa’s film, when a little girl from a school that won a contest names the just-discovered critter “Calvin.” That moment happens on a stage in Times Square, framing this discovery as a watershed moment in human history that’s celebrated the whole world over.

As the days stretch on aboard the ISS , Calvin evolves rapidly into a form that described as “all brain, all muscle, all eye.” That evolution stalls when an accident vents the atmosphere of the test chamber, sending Calvin into a dormant state. When a scientist tries to stimulate Calvin back into activity, the lethal nature of the creature’s true capabilities suddenly become apparent.

The core question that audiences tend to have when engaging with first-encounter science-fiction is generally, “Why are these ultra-smart/tough/competent people making stupid decisions?” The characters in Life never feel like they’re being dunderheads, though, because their situational and psychological motivations are sketched out so well that the actions feel very believable. Take, for example, the experiments and interactions that prod Calvin’s evolution into a threat; they’re part of a scientist’s duty in a situation where an important discovery is made.

When it comes to the science on display and the conceptualization of the characters, Life feels refreshingly grounded. Fear, pride, and shame are the primary colors here, with almost none of the paramilitary bravado seen in Life’s thematic forebears. Flight engineer Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds) is creeped out by Calvin while scientist Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) lusts to know more about it. Meanwhile, Miranda North from the Centers for Disease Control is a hard-ass about making Calvin is properly contained and medical officer David Gordon (Jake Gyllehaal) loves life on the International Space Station much more than on Earth. The work that goes into establishing a real sense of camaraderie and conflict amongst the crew pays off double in Life. When people die in this movie, there’s an important mix of both spectacle and sacrifice.

The ISS created by Espinosa and the special effects teams feels both expansive and claustrophobic, and the innovative camerawork in Life really sells the premise that it’s unfolding in a zero-G environment. Watching the actors glide, float and pull themselves along in scenes spin around on a 360-degree axis makes the drama seem all the more otherworldly.

That said, Life doesn’t happen in a far-off star system or on another planet. This is local horror, pulled from Earth’s neighbor. Beautiful views of mankind’s home are frequently shown in Life but, after things turn tense, you can’t ever enjoy the sight of the big, blue marble. Part of the cleverness that makes Life a smart, atmospheric achievement comes from evoking the wonder and potential danger of space exploration in a moment when humanity feels like on the brink of turning on itself. We might be our own worst enemies right now but Life reminds us that there’s probably something even worse out amongst the stars if that ever stops being the case.

This may look like a photograph, but the highly realistic face staring back at you belongs to a man who died over 700 years ago. The researchers who performed this unbelievable facial reconstruction say their work is providing new details about the way ordinary people lived in medieval England.

This 13th-century man—dubbed “Context 958"—is one of approximately 400 complete burials found and excavated beneath the Old Divinity School of St. John’s College in Cambridge, England, between 2010 and 2012. Back during the medieval era, this spot was home to the Hospital of St. John, a charitable institution set up to care for the poor and sick in the community. For centuries, the dead were buried in a cemetery right out back.

The reconstruction of Context 958 is part of a collaborative effort between Cambridge University’s Division of Archaeology and the University of Dundee’s Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification. The Wellcome Trust-funded project, called “After the plague: health and history in medieval Cambridge,” is an effort to catalogue and analyze the burials in as much depth and detail as possible.

Based on an exhaustive analysis of his remains and the burial site, here’s what we know about Context 958.

He was just slightly over 40 years old when he died. His skeleton showed signs of considerable wear-and-tear, so he likely lead a tough and hard working life. His tooth enamel stopped growing during two occasions in his youth, suggesting he likely lived through bouts of famine or sickness when he was young. The archaeologists found traces of blunt force trauma inflicted to the back of his head, which healed over before he died. The researchers aren’t sure what he did for a living, but they think he was a working-class person who specialized in some kind of trade.

Context 958 ate a diverse diet rich in meat or fish, according to an analysis of weathering patterns on his teeth. His profession may have provided him with more access to such foods than the average person at the time. His presence at the charitable hospital suggests he fell on hard times, with no one to take care of him.

“Context 958 was probably an inmate of the Hospital of St John, a charitable institution which provided food and a place to live for a dozen or so indigent townspeople—some of whom were probably ill, some of whom were aged or poor and couldn’t live alone,” noted John Robb, a professor from Cambridge University’s Division of Archaeology, in a statement.

Strangely, he was buried face down, which is rare but not unheard of in medieval burials. Robb and his colleagues are fascinated by Context 958 and those like him. Their analysis shows what it was like to live as an ordinary poor person back then—warts and all.

“Most historical records are about well-off people and especially their financial and legal transactions—the less money and property you had, the less likely anybody was to ever write down anything about you,” said Robb. “So skeletons like this are really our chance to learn about how the ordinary poor lived.”

Of course, facial reconstructions are only as good as the data they’re based on, in this case a highly-weathered skeleton. We can’t be completely certain that this is exactly what Context 958 looked like. But at the very least, it’s bringing his remains back to life. Work on other skeletons found at the site will continue, as the researchers are putting together a kind of biography of every individual studied. It’s a fitting tribute to regular folks whose lives would have otherwise been completely forgotten.

[University of Cambridge]

One of the coolest details about the Spider-Man design used in Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming is its mechanical, expressive eyes—a staple of Spidey in comics and animation, but rarely attempted in live action. It works great on screen, but fans are proving adept at recreating the effect for their costumes, too.

Aptly named Spidey cosplayer Lenses Factory HK has spent the past couple of months developing a mechanical version of the new Spider-Man face mask—which triggers the eye shape on the costume’s mask going from full to squinting with a mechanism operated by the user’s jaw. All it takes is opening and closing your mouth.

It’s a simple trick but one that’s really effective. They’ve even refined the design even more to make the transition smoother, and more accurate to the shape of the lenses on the new movie suit.

Peter Parker—and I guess Tony Stark, considering he made this version of the suit—would be proud of such ingenuity. The good news is, if you don’t want to attempt to make it yourself, Lenses is going to start selling a very limited run of masks like this come April. Just in time for Spider-Man: Homecoming!

[Nerdist]

In addition to the release of reviews for the Power Rangers movie this week, it’s also been revealed that the film has become the first mainstream superhero movie to feature a main character who happens to be LGBTQ. It’s a big step for superhero cinema, but a question remains—just exactly how big is it?

According to a brief new interview with director Dean Israelite for The Hollywood Reporter released yesterday, the film’s version of Trini (a.k.a. the Yellow Ranger, played by Becky G) is questioning her sexuality. The scene, from the film’s second act, is brief: The Rangers are all sitting around a campfire, discussing their various teenage problems. When Trini is asked about her issues, she says her family doesn’t get her relationships, at which point Billy asks her, “Boyfriend problems?” Trini dismisses the question, only for Billy to ask, “Girlfriend problems?” Trini doesn’t reply at all, citing that she doesn’t like labels—and then the movie moves on, tacitly acknowledging that whatever the character’s sexual preference it’s perfectly fine and normal.

It’s important to note that scene itself is clearly not explicit in saying that Trini is LGBTQ, but Israelite says that this was his intent:

For Trini, really she’s questioning a lot about who she is. She hasn’t fully figured it out yet. I think what’s great about that scene and what that scene propels for the rest of the movie is, ‘That’s OK.’ The movie is saying, ‘That’s OK,’ and all of the kids have to own who they are and find their tribe.

I’m conflicted about this revelation. Well, not the revelation itself, mind you. In fact, given the infamous history Power Rangers itself has behind the scenes with the way that David Yost, the original Blue Ranger, was treated horrendously by crew members on the show for being openly gay, it’s more than welcome. But for what is actually an incredibly important step forward in the representation of diverse characters in superhero cinema, and how long it’s taken, it feels disappointingly small.

The scene is a bit of a double-edged sword. It’s certainly good that Power Rangers treats its LGBT character with respect, and the matter-of-factness with which sexuality is mentioned briefly and not commented on, shows that Trini’s homosexuality is perfectly normal and just a facet of her life beyond being a putty-punting, costumed scifi superhero. It’s a normalization treated in the same manner heterosexual relationships are, in that they exist as completely normal aspects of life.

But at the same time, the moment is so brief, and so matter-of-fact, that it feels like Power Rangers movie may also want to be sweeping it under the rug as quickly as possible. Again, the film does not overtly confirm Trini’s homosexuality; it’s only the director who has confirmed it, and only this week. Whatever he asserts, the scene’s perfunctory vagueness could easily be seen as Israelite hedging his bets by some people. That’s obviously a very cynical way to look at it, but the scene could have resulted from this motive just as easily as it could have resulted from a desire to portray Trini’s sexuality with such matter-of-factness. Heck, maybe it’s both.

The superhero movieverse has come a long way in its representation of a diverse roster of heroes since the early 2000s and X-Men 2's “Have you tried not being a mutant?” scene (although some of its biggest steps, in terms of putting non-white and non-male heroes in leading roles, are still yet to come). In fact, superhero television has come even further, especially with LGBTQ representation, thanks to characters like Sara Lance on Legends of Tomorrow, Curtis Holt on Arrow, and the ongoing arc surrounding Alex Danvers on Supergirl. For such a pivotal moment in the history of the mainstream superhero movie boom, that’s taken so long to get to, this scene being so minor—and apparently not even fully explicit in its intent—seems like a half step. Especially so on the back of the recent hubbub about LeFou in Beauty and the Beast’s “explicitly gay” scene being nothing more than a dance with another man at the end of the film. Moves like this and Power Rangers’ scene feel like the big movie studios are willing to pay lip service to LGBTQ characters, but not go nearly far enough in the manner they’re willing to treat heterosexual ones.

It is fantastic that, in Power Rangers’ Trini, we now have an LGBTQ hero in a major superhero blockbuster. I just wish that it hadn’t taken until Power Rangers to get here, in such a slight way.

According to Tracking Board, the latest script making its way through Hollywood right now is Princesses by Nir Paniry, described as “a female-driven Avengers featuring classic fairy tale princesses.” It’s being pitched to everyone, though, even though we all know that the only logical home for it is Disney.

Of course, Disney’s already got a live-action fairy tale mashup in ABC’s Once Upon a Time, which started out fun-ridiculous and is, by now, basically a bowl of cheese-covered sequins in terms of over-the-top ridiculousness. Also, part of the thing about The Avengers was that a lot of those superheroes had individual movies to establish their look and character. If you’re a studio that isn’t Disney, you don’t really have a catalogue of established princesses to pull from—just generic ones.

Tracking Board also adds that the version of the movie being shopped to Disney includes Joachim Ronning, director of the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Depending on how the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean does, that could make the package more or less attractive to Disney.

Either way, I’m having trouble seeing a successful Princesses at any other studio—at least not one that doesn’t either take years to establish or ends up looking like a generic, just-this-side-of-copyright-law, Disney knock-off. Disney may not own the original fairy tales, but they do own the look of the princesses they made famous. And that’s what everyone wants to see, anyway.

[Tracking Board via Coming Soon]

At Ghost Corps, the Ghostbusters office on the Sony Pictures lot in Los Angeles, franchise co-creator Ivan Reitman admits the most recent film was a disappointment. And yet the Ghostbusters are not dead, and do not need to be busted themselves. Not by a long shot.

“We certainly would’ve loved to have a larger hit,” Reitman, who produced the new movie, told io9. “But considering the last film was almost 30 years ago, it really did extremely well. I think the film cost too much, frankly, and that’s the real issue. I personally had other points of view in terms of where the film should go and it was kind of a continuous conversation with Paul [Feig] about that. But Paul was the filmmaker on this one and he’s a very talented director. I wanted to give him enough room to do the film he thought it should be.”

Despite the issues with the recent film, Reitman clearly has hope for the franchise’s future. In fact, this week sees the release of a brand new comic book series, where the Ghostbusters past and present cross over, as well the first chapter of Ghostbusters VR: Now Hiring, a home VR experience that hits the PlayStation Store today. It’s just the latest example of how the franchise is trying to maintain its popularity and relevance despite the film’s disappointment.

“I think Ghostbusters is this wonderful [intellectual property] because it has so many storytelling opportunities,” Reitman said. “And it’s a particularly good one for VR.”

That’s presumably because it can put you right in the middle of the ghostbusting action. In Now Hiring, Act 1: Firehouse you are a new recruit who has an appointment to become a Ghostbuster. However, just as you are about to enter the firehouse, Slimer gets loose and it’s up to you to strap on a proton pack, grab a ghost trap, and catch him. The experience runs about 10 minutes long and is designed to give the user the control basics for the world and allow them to explore the iconic Ghostbusters HQ. It then ends on a bit of a cliffhanger for the second chapter.

Jake Zim, the SVP of VR for Sony Pictures Entertainment, explained how it will follow the increasingly popular periodic release schedule. “Where we put out chapter one, if people like it and see what they want, then we can add chapter two and keep going,” he said. “Ghostbusters is so big you can kind of go all over the place.”

And that’s exactly the plan. Reitman confirmed that besides this and the comic, development is still moving along on other projects, including multiple new movies.

“We jumped into an animated film [after the last movie] and we are developing live-action films,” Reitman said. “I want to bring all these stories together as a universe that makes sense within itself. Part of my job right now is to do that.”

He hopes the animated film will be in theaters in either 2019 or 2020 but can’t say for sure. “It depends on on how fast we can get it all together,” he said. “It’s hard to make an animated film.” Rather unsurprisingly, Reitman remained tight-lipped about the live-action films.

Assuming the development of Now Hiring isn’t an anomaly, Reitman himself will stay heavily involved; he worked hand-in-hand with Sony’s VR team to perfect every detail in Now Hiring.

“For this project he would come to our developer’s office down the street and spend time in the headset, essentially editing in-engine, giving a lot of notes, a lot of feedback, and being very critical in the right ways.” Zim said. Reitman even suggested the addition of Mooglie, a version of the Ghostbusters logo, to be the guide in Now Hiring, and got Patton Oswalt to voice him.

“VR has always been something I’ve been interested in as a storyteller,” Reitman said. “The rules of VR are quite different in terms of how you use editing, multiple angles, and most important, how you tell the story.”

As for where that story could go, Reitman would only say it’s original to this medium with plenty of adaptability. “It’ll go as long as we can figure out ways to change it up and as long as people are interested,” he said.

Zim, however, admitted several more chapters are in the works and even offered up a tease. “Ivan knows the entire world and where he wants it to go,” Zim said. “Like what happens when you’re not a Ghostbuster? If you’re on the paranormal side?” That would certainly be a brand new take on Ghostbusters—and maybe just the thing to stop the franchise from becoming a ghost itself.

There’s nothing at first glance that would tell you why Lucasfilm refused to release this behind-the-scenes photo from A New Hope. But once you hear it, and put it together with George Lucas’ need to control details, it makes total sense.

Yesterday, a fan account tweeted the above photo of Mark Hamill. And since Hamill’s twitter account is one of the few truly pure places on the internet, he responded with an explanation of why the photo had been MIA for years:

How dare there be a photo of Hamill wearing only part of his costume! Although, if it was supposed to be an official portrait of Luke Skywalker, that does make a bit more sense. Either way, it’s out now and thank god Hamill is here to tell us fun facts about it.

[via The Hollywood Reporter]

The recent Clone Conspiracy event has brought back a few dead people from Spider-Man’s past. Some good, some... well, less good. One of those folks is none other than Otto Octavius—he’s back, better than ever before, and he’s got some new supervillainous friends to boot.

Marvel has just unveiled its June solicitations, and naturally, the upcoming reveal of Steve Rogers’ fealty to Hydra in Secret Empire plays a big part in them. There’s tons of spinoff books like Brave New World and Uprising, but the event will also bleed into other ongoing series, like Amazing Spider-Man #29, which will see Otto reveal that he’s joined Steve’s Hydra invasion, and he’s ready to take Peter Parker down again as the Superior Octopus.

Fancy duds you got there, Doc. Very Spider-Man, which is appropriate give the fact he was Spider-Man for a bit.

This is the culmination of what’s been a long road for Octavius, ever since his “death” in 2012, which ultimately lead to him body-swapping with Peter Parker and inhabiting the webslinger’s body as the Superior Spider-Man. And thus, being comics, neither Peter nor Otto were gone for good—when Pete got his body back, Otto lived on, hiding in the body of the Living Brain as Peter’s docile robot assistant. That remained until the recent Clone Conspiracy event brought him back into a cloned version of his old body, and then later in its climax, gave him a new, younger “perfect” clone body that the reborn Ben Reilly had planned to use for himself.

It’s... a long story. But now, Otto is back in his preferred Octopus form, and he’s got quite a bit of beef to settle with Spider-Man. Amazing Spider-Man #29 is set to hit shelves in June.

[CBR]

Hey, there’s a new Mass Effect game out this week! How about that. While Mass Effect: Andromeda tells a story independent of the original trilogy, there’s enough existing lore, jargon and backstory that you probably want to brush up before you dive in. I’m here to help.

I’ve played a dozen or so hours of Andromeda and have mixed feelings, but I know that brushing up on the lore is helpful to get back into a Mass Effect state of mind. If you want a full take on the game, check out Patricia’s review.

In Andromeda, your character Ryder has been cryogenically frozen and dispatched alongside thousands of others on a six-hundred-year journey to colonize the Andromeda galaxy. They departed in the middle of the original trilogy, before any of the earthshaking events of Mass Effect 3. As a result, they have a blank slate on which to write their own story.

That fresh start notwithstanding, the game’s writers still regularly assume that players will be familiar with the events of the first three games, particularly given that by the time your character wakes up, the trilogy has long since concluded. The new game rarely performs the sort of expositional hand-holding players got in the first Mass Effect, so if you don’t know a Turian soldier from a Salarian scientist, you’re probably going to feel a bit lost.

As I’ve previously done for Dragon Age and The Witcher, I’ve assembled a beginner’s guide to the world of Mass Effect. A few notes: This post will contain no spoilers for Mass Effect: Andromeda, though it will fully spoil the events of the first three games in the series. I should give a shout-out to the dedicated folks who have built the Mass Effect fan wiki, an immense tome of knowledge that was immensely helpful in fact-checking this article. Lastly, while I am a pretty big Mass Effect nerd, I’m sure I’ve made a few mistakes. If you see any errors or oversights in this post I hope you’ll let me know.

THE BASICS

Mass Effect is set in the Milky Way galaxy in the late 22nd century. It’s the year 2183, shortly after humans have made first contact with alien races. Fifty years prior to the start of the first game, humans discovered alien wreckage on Mars that led to the development of new, advanced technology that allowed us to swiftly make contact with a variety of non-human races that had been coexisting throughout the Milky Way without our knowledge.

The tech that made all that possible is called Mass Effect technology, hence the name of the series. I won’t get too technical largely because this stuff is made-up and I don’t fully understand it, but the short version is that mass effect tech revolves around the use of mass effect fields, which harness the power of a new element called element zero in order to manipulate space-time.

Mass effect fields can be used alternately to power huge starships or to power gates that allow for easy faster-than-light (FTL) travel. Once humans learned to harness the power of mass effect fields, they discovered a network of gates called mass relays leading throughout the galaxy, each of which allowed for near-instantaneous travel to the far reaches of the Milky Way.

All these wondrous mass effect devices didn’t just spring fully formed into the galaxy, nor were they the work of any of the aliens humans found on the other side of their first FTL trip. The mass relays, and mass effect technology in general, were believed to have been created by a lost, mysterious precursor race known as the Protheans. (The full story of their creation turned out to be more complicated.) The ruins humanity found on Mars were Prothean ruins. Little was known about them at the start of the first Mass Effect, and the original trilogy largely revolved around uncovering their story.

With mass effect drives and mass relays under our collective belt, humanity set forth to sort of dickishly elbow its way into the galactic spotlight. We did so driven not just by our ambition and impressive technology, but also with help from humans imbued with biotic powers. A certain small percentage of humans, known as as biotics, began exhibiting powers after being exposed to element zero. Those powers manifest as glowing blue energy—they’re able to generate their own self-contained mass effect fields. Biotics are able to throw around and detonate self-contained energy fields, and can be fearsome warriors.

Humanity quickly made a name for itself as an aggressive, ambitious race. We even started a brief war called the First Contact War with the first aliens we met—in fairness, they kinda started it—and despite our relative technological youth managed to hold our own.

Humanity soon made peace with the other alien races of the Milky Way and were allowed access to The Citadel, a massive and oddly little-understood Prothean space station that served as the center of galactic trade and government for the Milky Way. The citadel was ruled by council members who represented the three council races—Asari, Salarian, and Turian, detailed below—who reluctantly allowed humans onboard the station. While our time on the galactic stage had been relatively short, most of the aliens we’d encountered had learned not to underestimate us and, usually, not to really like us.

The original Mass Effect trilogy centered on a player-created human protagonist named Commander Shepard, who could be a woman or a man. Shepard led the human race and, eventually, the rest of the allied races of the Milky Way galaxy in a lengthy and escalating war against The Reapers, a race of powerful killing machines from beyond our galaxy. Andromeda picks up near the end of the events of Mass Effect 2, so the preceding backstory remains the same for both games.

Before we get into the events of the main trilogy, let’s talk about aliens.

ALIEN RACES, BOTH FRIENDLY AND UNFRIENDLY

The non-human races of the Mass Effect universe run the gamut from thoughtful scientists to warlike barbarians, and if you play your cards right, you could usually have sex with at least one of them per game. Because Andromeda hits the ground running, it’s important to go into the new game knowing the differences among the major species. The writers assume that your character (and by extension, you) know a krogan from a turian, so you probably should. Let’s get to it.

Asari are a blue-skinned race of aliens who all look like—surprise!—beautiful women. If you’ve seen someone on TV talking about Mass Effect and alien sex, chances are pretty good the scene you watched featured an Asari. Asari can live to be a thousand years old and as a result take a detached, long-term view of the galaxy around them. They’re able to reproduce with members of any sex or race, and each Asari is encouraged to look outside their fellow Asari in order to enhance and diversify their gene pool. They’re also all born biotics, though not all Asari use biotic powers.

Asari are one of the most respected and powerful races in the Milky Way, and they tend to hold positions of power and influence. Their native planet of Thessia features only briefly in the Mass Effect trilogy, which is too bad, since it would’ve been a cool place to visit. The most important Asari in the original trilogy is Liara T’Soni, a researcher who joined your crew in the first game and made frequent appearances throughout the sequels.

Salarians are another important race, best known as scientists and researchers. They have reptilian skin and a notably short lifespan, with the average salarian topping out at 30 or 40 years at most. They’re brilliant scientists and are responsible for much of the technological advancement shared by alien races across the galaxy. Hailing from the planet of Sur’Kesh, they’re notoriously pragmatic and unsentimental, and frequently willing to make sacrifices in order to benefit the majority.

Salarian scientists have been responsible for some incredible breakthroughs. They’ve also brought about horrible calamity. The show-tune loving scientist Mordin Solus is easily the most well-known salarian in the original trilogy, and one of the most beloved characters in any BioWare canon.

Turians are a race of creepy-looking hardasses who usually act as law enforcement and muscle for the Asari and Salarians. Turians look sort of like talking catfish, with a beetle-like shell and a cat-like way of speaking and acting. They’re notoriously forthright, a warrior race that lives according to a military code. They helped design the starships used by the other council races, and are best thought of as the cops of the Mass Effect universe.

Turians were the first race humans made contact with after we discovered mass effect travel, and we fought against them in the brief but vicious First Contact War before everyone involved decided the turians probably shouldn’t have started out by shooting. The two most important turians in the original trilogy are Saren Arterius and Garrus Vakarian; the former, the antagonist of the first game, the latter a beloved crew member, ally and potential love interest for the run of the trilogy.

The krogan are a violent group of reptilian hardcases who look like what would happen if you crossed a horny toad with a stegosaurus. The krogan spent many years isolated on their brutal home planet of Tuchanka, where they evolved into the dominant species. They made their galactic debut thanks to the salarians, who enlisted their help to win a war against a deadly race of insect-like aliens known as the Rachni.

The krogan helped fight the rachni to near extinction, and in the process began to rapidly expand and conquer swaths of the known galaxy. That led to a war known as the Krogan Rebellion, which pitted the krogan against the other most powerful races in the Milky Way. The krogan rebellion was cut short when the turians deployed a devastating salarian-developed bio-weapon known as the genophage, which destroyed the krogan on a genetic level by causing almost all new krogan babies to be stillborn.

Since the genophage the krogan have fallen into decline and their numbers have dwindled. Various attempts to cure the genophage have all failed, though many krogan hold out hope that their species will still somehow survive. They are pretty hard to kill, after all. Notable krogan in the original trilogy include the mercenary Wrex in the first game and the genetically engineered super-krogan Grunt in parts two and three. (The krogan keep their names nice and simple.)

Quarians are a nomadic, tribal people who travel the galaxy in a huge migrant fleet called… the Migrant Fleet. They’re easily identified by the protective suits they wear, since their bodies aren’t able to filter all the germs they may encounter in their galactic travels. They’re notable tinkerers, constantly experimenting with new technology and creations, and are most infamous for creating the geth, a race of sentient artificial intelligence that eventually rebelled against them and conquered the quarian home planet of Rannoch.

The sentient android geth are one of the primary antagonist races in the main Mass Effect trilogy, and the quarians are often seen as pariahs by the other races for their role in the geth’s creation. Because of the geth, most true artificial intelligence in the Milky Way has been deemed illegal, and most organic races hold a deep-seated distrust of computer intelligence. The most well-known quarian is a woman named Tali’Zorah nar Rayya (or just “Tali” for short) who joined Commander Shepard on his or her adventures throughout all three original Mass Effect games.

Those are the big races, but just for context, a few other races include:

• The hanar, a race of philosophical walking jellyfish that worship the protheans with religious fervor. (A long-running joke in the original trilogy featured ads for a TV show about a hanar special agent named Blasto.)
• The Elcor, a funny group of Eeyore-like aliens who preface everything they say with the attendant emotion due to their lack of vocal inflection.
• The Volus, a race of smaller (dare I say roly-poly?) aliens who tend to favor their mercantile strengths over their martial prowess.
  

I’ve discussed the various antagonist races already, but just to recap:

• The Geth were a race of sentient artificial intelligence who rose up after being created by the quarians.
• The Protheans are a mysterious, advanced precursor race that vanished mysteriously but are believed to have left behind all manner of useful technology including the mass relays.
• The Rachni were intelligent, bug-like creatures who threatened to overrun the galaxy and were eventually put down by the council races with an assist from the krogan.
• The Reapers were the big bad of the original trilogy, a race of unknowably powerful sentient machines who visited our galaxy on a set schedule in order to exterminate all life.
  

Speaking of that whole “Reapers exterminating all life” thing, let’s talk about what happened in the first three games.

THE EVENTS OF THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY

While the characters in Andromeda set out on their journey before the most consequential events of the main trilogy took place, they then traveled for 600 years. Not only has the trilogy concluded by the start of the new game, characters in Andromeda also occasionally reference things that will mean a lot more if you know what happened in the first three games. I will now summarize what happened in each game as expeditiously as possible.

Mass Effect 1: Saren and the first Reaper attack

The first Mass Effect concerned a rogue Turian named Saren and his plot to pave the road for the Reapers to arrive and wipe out life in the galaxy. Saren was a well-respected Specter, an elite operative who represented the Citadel council and operated above the law. At the start of the first game, Commander Shepard is working as a special operations soldier who heads to a human colony to investigate reports of a recently exhumed Prothean artifact. (I played as a lady commander Shepard, so for the rest of this article I’m just gonna call Shepard a her.)

The colony is under attack by the robotic geth. In the chaos Shepard makes her way to the Prothean artifact and also learns about Saren, who has gone rogue and is leading the geth. She comes in contact with the artifact itself, which shows her a disturbing vision of galactic destruction. Shepard returns to the citadel and eventually manages to convince the council of Saren’s treachery. In the process she gets herself elevated to specter status, the first human to achieve the honor.

Shepard the specter is tasked with finding out what Saren is up to and stopping him. She’s given a badass starship known as The Normandy and told, more or less, to do whatever it takes.

In the process of her adventure she recruits a typically BioWare-y motley crew of helpers. Among them: Wrex, a violent Krogan with a complicated past; Tali, a wandering Quarian who may know more about the geth than she lets on; Garrus, an eager young turian who had been serving as a cop on the Citadel; Kaiden and Ashley, two human soldiers conscripted to join Shepard’s cause; Joker, a sarcastic ace pilot with bones so thin they break at the slightest touch; and Liara, an asari who has been researching the protheans.

Shepard tracks Saren across the galaxy and eventually uncovers the truth behind the rogue specter’s actions. Saren’s mind has been corrupted by a Reaper called Sovereign, a massive nautiloid machine intelligence that declares itself the vanguard of a looming, unstoppable invasion. Sovereign has the power to warp and mind-control biological life forms—this process is known as indoctrination—and is using them to set up the next in a long series of purges where the Reapers arrive and exterminate all life from the galaxy.

Shepard eventually learns that the Citadel itself is not just a space station but also a dormant mass effect relay, and if activated it will open a gate for the Reapers to begin the invasion of our galaxy. Sovereign tells Shepard that the mass relays were not the work of the Protheans at all, but rather were put in place to guide civilizations toward the Citadel and their eventual destruction.

With help from her entire crew as well as the Citadel council and fleet, Shepard catches up with Saren, who has landed an attack party aboard the Citadel. She stops him from opening the gate to the Reapers and, depending on how the player chooses to role-play it, can either help him take back control of his mind or simply kill him.

While Shepard is dealing with Saren aboard the Citadel, the rest of the fleet is fighting off Sovereign, who has arrived intent on destroying the council and opening the gate. Some fancy flying and a few moral choices later, Sovereign is destroyed, the Citadel is safe, and Shepard and most of her crew have lived to fight another day. The Reaper threat, however, remains.

Mass Effect 2: The Collectors and the Illusive Man

Mass Effect 2 started out with what is widely regarded as one of the most memorable video game intro sequences of all time. Shepard is leading her crew on a routine mission when the Normandy is attacked by a mysterious ship capable of bypassing her defenses. The ship is destroyed and Shepard dies while attempting to get her crew out safely.

Shepard’s remains are collected by a shadowy group known as Cerberus, who use unknown technology to rebuild her from the cells up and bring her back to life. The resurrected Shepard then meets the leader of Cerberus, a mysterious guy called The Illusive Man, memorably played by Martin Sheen. The Illusive Man and Cerberus believe that humans are superior to all other races, and, he says, have brought Shepard back to investigate attacks that have been carried out on remote human colonies.

Shepard puts together another motley crew, bringing back Joker as pilot, Garrus as soldier and the quarian Tali, along with a genetically engineered krogan named Grunt, a mysterious assassin named Thane, an unauthorized artificial intelligence named EDI, and a few more characters we don’t have time to get into. They quickly learn of a new threat to the galaxy, chitinous aliens known as The Collectors who are attacking human colonies and abducting people for an unknown purpose.

Over the course of the game, Shepard and her crew learn that The Collectors are in fact husked out Protheans, the precursor race who they believed had built all of the technology that has allowed the modern-day races to communicate and travel as they do. Thousands of years ago the Protheans were a benign race that acted as architects for much of the galaxy as we’ve come to know it—they learned of and studied the races that would go on to become the council races, paving the way for those civilizations to eventually grow and prosper.

That all changed when the protheans came up against the Reapers, a seemingly unstoppable machine enemy bent on destroying all advanced civilizations in the galaxy. The protheans fought a desperate war against the reapers for generations until they were all but wiped out. A small subset of protheans survived, controlled and warped by the reapers until they became the evil husks Shepard and her crew were now calling The Collectors.

In the end, it turned out the Collectors had been kidnapping humans and melting them down in order to build a new Reaper that looked like a giant T-800 from Terminator. (Yeah, bit of an unsatisfying conclusion after a game’s worth of build-up.) In a last-ditch suicide mission, Shepard and her crew stormed the Collectors’ base of operations, destroyed the reaper before it could be activated and, if the player played his or her cards right, made it out with most of Shepard’s crew alive. The day was saved but, as at the end of the first game, the final showdown with the Reapers was only delayed.

Mass Effect 3: The final war with the Reapers.

Mass Effect 3 concluded Commander Shepard’s story by finally giving us the showdown with the reapers they’d spent two games building toward. The reapers were here, their plan to invade and exterminate had begun, and it was up to Shepard to lead an increasingly hopeless war against them. For Andromeda players, keep in mind that the following all happened while our new heroes were fast asleep in hypersleep.

Shepard is put in command of the combined war effort on behalf of all sentient life in the galaxy, tasked with unifying everyone in a desperate attempt to stop a seemingly unstoppable adversary. One last time Shepard assembled a motley crew aboard a cool ship, though everything had a much more fatalistic air this time around. It was the end, and everyone knew it. People were gonna die. Maybe everyone was gonna die.

Because it was the last game in the trilogy, a whole lot of shit went down in Mass Effect 3, some of which would play out very differently depending on the choices you made in the game. The loyal quarian Tali could watch her entire home fleet be destroyed, then commit suicide right in front of you. Or not! That didn’t have to happen! Shepard could ally herself with the geth in order to fight off the reapers, or not! Maybe not. All of Shepard’s teammates could die before the end, or not! Maybe they didn’t die!

Whatever choices you may have made throughout the game, it all boiled down to a showdown between Shepard, her army, and the Reaper fleet. Shepard spends most of the game working on a weapon known as The Crucible, which is seen by many as the one weapon that could conceivably do real damage to the Reaper fleet. Shepard hurriedly flies from planet to planet, avoiding the mass carnage being wreaked by the Reapers while hunting for Prothean artifacts that can help with the completion of the weapon, in particular chasing something known as “The Catalyst,” a crucial component to the finished weapon.

Meanwhile The Reapers have been systematically wiping out pretty much everyone—the asari homeworld lays in ruins, the turians are screwed, even the krogan aren’t doing so well. As her frantic mission proceeds, Shepard learns that the Catalyst is in fact The Citadel itself, and that the space station has the capacity to activate a massive weapon that could wipe out the reapers for good. She charts a course for Earth, towing the Citadel alongside, arriving just as the Reapers are finishing up melting the planet’s population. The Illusive Man turns up one last time to fuck everyone over and tip the Reapers off about the Catalyst, which causes the good guys to lose control of the Citadel just as it arrives in our solar system. (Some of the specifics are a little hazy here for me, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got all this right.)

Shepard leads her crew in an all-out ground assault against the Reapers in London, during which many of her crew sacrifice themselves to get her to a tractor beam that will transport her up to the Citadel. Once on board, the thinking goes, she can activate the Crucible weapon and take the Reapers down. One thing leads to another, the fight doesn’t go well, lots of people die, and Shepard winds up alone on the Citadel looking down on the ruins of humanity as the Reapers decimate all life on earth.

Then a bunch of stuff happens that I’m not really going to detail here, both because it’s all kinds of esoteric and complicated and also because it culminated in an ending so controversial that it led to a massive fan revolt, countless aggrieved blog posts and YouTube videos and, ultimately, a patch from the developers that fleshed things out. There were strong arguments from many angles about the way BioWare’s writers chose to end their trilogy, and I don’t really want to re-litigate the whole thing here.

Short version: First, the Reaper-indoctrinated Illusive Man shows up on board the Citadel and tries to convince Shepard that she can use the Crucible to take control of the Reapers. He’s cut short when she either shoots him or convinces him to shoot himself. Then, a mysterious AI construct appears to Shepard in the form of a little kid (don’t ask) and explains that this is all part of a preordained cycle. All of it: The protheans, the rise of the council races, even the Reapers. Whenever galactic species evolve past a certain point, the Reapers come back and wipe them all out. For countless millennia, organic life and machine life have never been able to truly coexist.

In the end, Shepard is given control of The Crucible and with it, the ultimate choice as to how to proceed. She can take control of the Reapers, synthesize organic life with artificial life, or destroy the Reapers and all other machine life in the galaxy. No matter which option she took, life as we knew it ceased to exist. Some of your crew (or even Shepard herself) may or may not have survived, and a lot of what happened was contingent on how many sidequests you performed to get your “war readiness” score up during the main game.

Long story short: Everything went to shit, pretty much everyone died, and it’s not entirely clear what happened after that. The end.

Whew! Kind of a downer ending there, but remember, it’s also a beginning. The whole time all that was happening, the cast of Mass Effect Andromeda were tucked safely in their little cryo-beds, dreaming of a new galaxy and blissfully unaware of all the rockin romance and robot violence taking place in the home they left behind.

There are of course dozens more Mass Effect side stories, supporting characters, minor conflicts and weird robots that I’ve left out, but I’d say we’ve covered the most important stuff. If there’s anything you think bears a mention, by all means mention it in the comments below.

Netflix and Marvel’s Iron Fist is not good TV. It is bad and boring TV with terrible fight scenes and a lead actor who comes from the “petulant grimace” school of acting. The only reason to watch Iron Fist is so you can be prepared for The Defenders, the epic series that will cross Iron Fist over with the casts of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage. Instead, let us save you some time.

The Iron Fist Has One Job Which Danny Rand Decides to Not Do

Danny Rand began life as a precious and very wealthy child with locks so luscious Rapunzel was jealous. Then his dad (and presumably his mom*) died in a plane crash and he was raised by sort of sadistic monks to be a lean mean fighting machine. Then he fought a dragon and became the Iron Fist, a fierce warrior who can channel his chi into his fist to stop bullets or annihilate walls.

The Iron Fist has one job: to defend the passage to K’un L’un, the magical monk land, from the Hand, that group of evil ninjas that kept showing up in Daredevil. Danny decides this is dumb and he would rather return to New York to run a company he hasn’t set foot in since he was 10 years old. He complains whenever someone points out this makes no sense and generally makes terrible decision after terrible decision as the leader of a business—presumably because while others were learning math and science and how to do their taxes Danny was learning how to punch ninjas instead.

You Don’t Get to See Danny Fight a Dragon

In the comics, Danny Rand gained the title of Iron Fist after defeating a dragon without using any weapons. In the TV show, this very awesome moment is somehow embarrassing to both Danny—who only sheepishly, reluctantly admits it late in the series—and to the makers of the show itself, because they don’t bother to show us the fight.

Colleen Wing Has a Secret

The show wants you to believe Colleen Wing has a problem, that she’s fully of incredible rage and a love of partaking in cage fights. Colleen’s real secret is that she’s a member of the Hand, that ninja clan that Daredevil and Elektra fought constantly in Daredevil season two. She was recruited after the death of her grandfather, who also taught her to fight with a katana. Although she meets Danny by chance, when she learns he is the Iron Fist she is charged with recruiting him to the Hand’s cause.

We Finally Sort of Know What the Hand Are Doing

The scope of the organization known as the Hand is finally revealed in Iron Fist; they are mystical ninjas out to manipulate and run the world in true supervillain style. Besides secretly invading New York, infiltrating Danny Rand’s company, orchestrating the death of his family, and building an enormous hole in Hell’s Kitchen, we’re still not entirely clear on what the Hand wants beyond a nebulous sense of “order.”

In Iron Fist we learn there are multiple Hand factions. Madame Gao, the criminal overlord from Daredevil, is a leader of the Hand in addition to being a drug dealer peddling magical heroin. Colleen Wing and Bakuto are more peacefully driven members of the Hand, out to save and recruit the forgotten children of New York.

All of them want to control Danny Rand and his mystical hand—except for Colleen. She has other, naughtier plans for that hand.

Yep, Danny Rand Is a Virgin

Danny Rand was too busy fighting dragons and being beaten by warrior monks to use his Iron Fist for more salacious purposes. Danny, of course, falls for Colleen, and their romance is actually sweet—even if it does demand that Colleen falls for a stinky hobo ninja who tracks her to her dojo and then brutally beats one of her students because he’s not respectful enough.

There’s Obviously Something Up With Danny’s Mom

Just before Danny’s plane crashed his mother was sucked out of a gaping hole in the plane. The monks never recover her body and it is presumed that she is dead. Then Iron Fist makes efforts to mention her body was never found. Repeatedly. Also, Madame Gao claims that before the accident, she lured Danny’s mom into joining the Hand so that she could use her connections to Danny’s father to give the Hand an easier time of infiltrating the company.

That all means Danny Rand’s mother is almost certainly currently alive and a villain. Also, please note that she was a brunette before she was sucked into the ethers. You know who else is a brunette? Sigourney Weaver in The Defenders.

Claire Temple Is Done With This Shit

Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple returns to the Netflix Marvel universe in Iron Fist, and she is every bit as good as she’s been in every other series. But being as this is now her fourth time at the superhero rodeo, she is not impressed by Danny’s glowing hand or his and Colleen’s tendency to punch first and talk later.

Madame Gao briefly suggests that Claire is jealous of all the heroes and only works with them in the hopes of their greatness rubbing off on her. But by the end of the season, Claire has been trained by a Hand ninja and the Iron Fist and is pulling some sweet Hellcat-style claws so she can go off and be her own hero, a badass nurse who works at night and who can punch a ninja in the face. Claire rules.

Luke Cage Is Still in Jail

One of the reasons Claire spends so much time with Danny and Colleen, despite finding everything they do sort of stupid, is because Luke is in jail. We don’t know much beyond that, and that, according to Claire, the legal system sucks.

Danny’s Attorney and Former Best Friend Have Ties to Jessica Jones

Jeri Hogarth makes an appearance as Danny’s attorney and old family friend. As in Jessica Jones she continues to be a ruthless but brutally effective attorney who really has no time or energy for superheroic shenanigans or magic or superpowers.

But Jeri isn’t the only Iron Fist cast member who has connections to everyone’s favorite alcoholic private investigator. Joy, Danny’s best friend from childhood and a member of the Meachum family (whose antics takes up a bulk of Iron Fist’s running time despite mattering very little to the overall plot), hired Jessica to investigate all the board members of Danny’s company so she could blackmail them into letting her keep her job as the Rand Corporation’s general counsel.

Note: This does not mean Jessica Jones has a physical cameo in Iron Fist, of course. Sigh.

Speaking of Joy, even she’s completely disenchanted with her childhood friend Danny, and has teamed up with his pal Davos from his K’un-Lun days to orchestrate Danny’s murder.

Danny Rand Is Literally the Worst Iron Fist ever

Again, the Iron Fist isn’t just a title, but a job given to K’un-L’un’s greatest fighter to protect the magical city—a job Danny leaves in the show’s first episode. By the final episode, Danny has a hankering to show Colleen the land he was sworn to protect, but abruptly abandoned so he could play at being a business man and superhero in New York.

When Danny and Colleen arrive in K’un-Lun they find a crater where the city once was and dead Hand ninjas everywhere.

As Davos is fond of saying:

Birds are incredible, beautiful creatures from afar. They have lots of colors, they have beaks, they can fly, and all that other neat birdy stuff. Up close, they are horrible, smelly dinosaurs with sharp claws who squawk and could attack at any moment.

Recently, a group of scientists turned on a recording of what they think is a parrot play call, and observed that kea parrots became more “playful” in response. “Laughter is contagious among parrots,” all the press people want me to say. I will not be coerced into saying such a thing. I respect and appreciate birds out of fear, but I refuse to personify them with any set of traits beyond soulless, scheming evil.

The experiment seemed innocuous enough. A team of scientists representing Austrian, Australian and New Zealand universities played warble calls to a highly intelligent New Zealand parrot species called the kea. The horrible dino descendants reacted, doing what the researchers call playing—and what I call snapping into a horrible trance—dancing around in ways we think we understand but can never be sure we understand because we are not parrots. The warble sound was the only sound that had such a notable effect on the cretaceous creatures.

Had the researchers discovered that the parrots’ play call encouraged other parrots to play along, or had they discovered the on-switch for some bizarre, unexplained ritual? You can judge for yourself by reading the research published yesterday in Current Biology.

Now, scientists think they know keas pretty well, so the boorish birds probably are playing. Keas seem to be very social and smart, and also seem to enjoy playing with each other, Tamsin Orr-Walker, co-founder and chair of the Kea Conservation Trust, told National Geographic via email. She also said not to anthropomorphize the birds, which is something I might accidentally do for a cute puppy or kitten or even a horse if it didn’t smell too bad, but would never make the mistake of doing for a tyrannosaurus terror like a parrot.

It would be an important first if the parrots were playing in reaction to this laughing call. They would be the first avian (and first non-mammal) species observed to have an infectious laughter-like behavior, playing in response to the sound of their peers having fun. But birds are scary and I will not award them any such jolly distinction.

That being said, keas still sit on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List as a vulnerable species. They suffer at the hands of farmers with guns, toxic chemicals used in population control, and deforestation. We should protect these species, as they could be a powerful ally in the coming war against whales. Or fun to play with. Can we weaponize them? Who knows.

[Current Biology]

We finally have a full-length trailer for the next season of iZombie, and it tells us a lot about what’s in store for the team after last season’s total shake-up of a finale. The answer: Major Lilywhite helps solve crimes by eating a teenage girl’s brain.

We see a bit of our team in their SWAT gear from last season’s finale—looks like the bloodbath they survived will be covered up by a giant explosion. But the majority of this trailer gets the team back to solving crimes. Only now, Clive Babineaux knows Liv’s a zombie and not psychic, and Major’s getting in on the action. I feel for Babineaux. Some things were more fun when you were in the dark.

You know what else? They do need a van and a dog. Someone get on that.

iZombie returns April 4.

Who’s to say big events and hyped-up character deaths are strictly the purview of superhero comics? Marvel might have Secret Empire on the way, DC has Dark Days ahead, and now Archie is getting in on the excitement with something called Over the Edge. A Riverdale favorite won’t make it out alive.

Announced today, this three-part story—penned by Archie writer Mark Waid with art by Pete Woods—across Archie #20, #21, and #22 will see Archie’s ongoing rivalry with Reggie Mantle culminate in a dangerous street race at Dead Man’s Curve. Naturally, a big event at a place called Dead Man’s Curve will lead to tragedy, and an as-yet-unrevealed Archie favorite will lose his or her life. It’s going to be a major character, considering the press release provided by Archie Comics states that the death will set up “years of new and undiscovered destinies for the entire cast.”

So who does the bell toll for? Well, it’s not going to be Archie—after all, he’s the guy in the title of the book (that’s not stopped Archie Comics from killing off Archie in a series before—but that death was the end of a book altogether, and I doubt Waid is closing the book on the popular Archie reboot just yet). Reggie seems like an obvious candidate, to evoke some drama and consequences for his feud with Archie. But it seems like the real answer will be someone else who gets caught up in their bitter rivalry, a person whose death will have big ramifications on both characters.

Could it be Jughead? Betty, Veronica? Ms. Grundy? Sound off in the comments for who it could be. Over the Edge is set to begin in May.

Millennials have already lost so much: A relatively secure housing market, the hope of stable careers, and an Earth that wasn’t completely littered with the mistakes of Baby Boomers. So when Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet in 2006, it was another nail in our fragile hearts. But that hasn’t stopped astronomers of all ages debating about whether or not Pluto—and other objects in our solar system—are, in fact, planets. Pluto could be a planet, because the very word “planet” is kinda ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, even for experts.

Today, planetary geologist Kirby Runyon will present a new definition of “planet” at the 48th Lunar Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, undoubtedly rekindling the flames of controversy. Runyon’s definition does away with a key International Astronomical Union (IAU) requirement for planethood—namely, that the object is massive enough to clear the neighborhood around its orbit. Instead, it focuses on the geophysical properties that set planets apart from smaller and less complex objects. A planet, according to Runyon, is “A substellar mass body that has never undergone nuclear fusion and that has enough gravitation to be round due to hydrostatic equilibrium regardless of its orbital parameters.” By this definition, many moons in our solar system—including our own—would be reclassified as planets.

Runyon’s definition could be a game changer for a few reasons. From a scientific standpoint, it’s much more inclusive than the IAU’s, meaning there would be a lot more planets in our Solar System—more than a hundred. He hopes this system would promote a different way of learning astronomy, one that focuses more on concepts and less on memorizing arbitrary celestial objects.

From a public interest perspective, Runyon’s argument gets at the crux of this debate—that perhaps, the glamour and gravity of the word “planet” bolsters the case for sending a mission to explore it. But again, this idea could also be ¯\_(ツ)_/¯—regardless, Gizmodo has reached out to Runyon for comment.

Some scientists assert there’s absolutely no confusion about the definition of a planet. Caltech astronomer Mike Brown, who famously helped demote Pluto with his discoveries of other large Kuiper Belt Objects beyond its orbit, told Gizmodo that the planets in our own solar system don’t require much back-and-forth debate at all, and a cursory glance at our current planets proves this.

“It’s really a very clear cut concept on what is a planet and what is not,” he said. “At least in our solar system, there are no gray areas at all, since it’s divided itself so nicely. If you look at our solar system with fresh eyes, you see there are eight big objects in these beautiful stately orbits going around the Sun, minding their own business and kicking out anything that gets close to them. The difference between the dominant and submissive objects is extreme.”

Brown advocated for Pluto’s demotion to dwarf planet status on the grounds that it does not clear its planetary neighborhood of objects in the Kuiper Belt. The decision was met with instant controversy that hasn’t entirely quieted down—Brown admits that he receives hate mail about it to this day. Naysayers aside, he maintains there’s a good reason to classify planets according to the IAU’s current model.

“People who are trying to change the definitions will often say things like, ‘It’s harder to justify the Pluto mission if Pluto’s no longer a planet,’” he explained. “To that I say, ‘If you can’t justify a billion dollar mission without having to change around whatever everybody thinks about the planet, really someone should take away the keys to your spacecraft.”

Above all, Brown’s not sold on the idea that granting something planetary status makes it more important.

“That is not a good reason to have the definition of planet—that’s a good reason to have a better PR person,” he said.

But the fact remains that there is a certain gravity (no pun intended) to granting something planetary status. While astronomers and planetary scientists are keen to explore moons like Enceladus and Europa because of their potential to support alien life, these aren’t objects kids in grade school are usually learning about in their science classes. Would that change if we called them planets?

“The word ‘planet’ has changed its meaning over 2,000 years of human scholarship on the subject, and most people don’t understand that” Vanderbilt University professor of astronomy David Weintraub told Gizmodo. “They think that a lot of ideas, a lot of words...their meanings are embedded in stone and never change. But as our knowledge of the universe changes, our vocabulary that we use to understand what we know about the universe changes.”

Weintraub asserts that for better or worse, vocabulary “drives the way we think about things,” in this case, about planets.

“The whole conversation is about the way we think about things in the universe, so it’s about us, it’s not about the object,” Weintraub said. “It’s about how we learn and understand those objects.”

Runyon’s definition wouldn’t necessarily negate the IAU one. But it would offer an alternative that could help astronomers and educators convey why lesser-known celestial objects—ones that we don’t have mnemonics to memorize—are just as interesting as Jupiter and Neptune. So, why not both?

Michelin wiper blades, Razer’s quietest mechanical keyboard, and PUMA clothing lead off Tuesday’s best deals.

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Top Tech Deals

Wi-Fi range extenders can’t work miracles, but if there’s one spot in your house with spotty coverage, they can be a much cheaper solution than buying a new router. So for $20, why not give this one a try? Most complaints about this model seem to stem from its setup process, but if you can get through that, people seem to like it.

USB charging hubs basically come in two varieties: Ones that plug directly into the wall, and ones that use an extension cord. This model from RAVPower is one of the only ones I’ve seen that can do both.

Anker’s new Ice-Case Lite for iPhone 7 combines a flexible shell with a reinforced bumper for superior protection in a thin and light package, and you can get one for $7 with promo code KINJAICE, for two days only. You even get to pick from gunmetal, black, and rose gold.

Anker’s new PowerDrive Speed 2 can charge two devices with Quick Charge 3.0 simultaneously, and it looks really nice to boot. For a limited time, get it for $22, or about $4 less than usual.

Google Home is the smart speaker that Google devotees have been clamoring for, and if you buy two of them from B&H today for $229, or about $30 off (plus no tax outside of NY and NJ). These smart voice-activated speakers work best when they can hear you all around the house, so once you buy one, you’ll probably end up wanting a second eventually anyway.

Amazon’s own attempt at a metal laptop stand is a little jankier looking than, say, the Rain Design mStand, but it’s far cheaper at $15 ($5 less than usual), and accomplishes the exact same thing.

Most laptops don’t have CD drives anymore, which is mostly fine, except for that one time that inevitably pops up every year or two where you really wish you had one. Now, you can for just $22, no extra power cable required.

The Razer Blade Stealth ultrabook isn’t actually all that great a gaming laptop (unless you buy the Razer Core external GPU, but, come on), but it is a fantastic high-end general purpose laptop, with build quality that rivals Apple, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 12.5" 4K display.

Amazon’s marked this particular high-end configuration down to an all-time low $1450 today on Amazon, or $150 less than usual. That’s not a cheap computer by any means, but it’s sure to make your friends drool.

Our readers recently named Anker PowerPort as their favorite line of USB charging hubs, and the PowerPort Speed 5 is on sale for $24 today with promo code BEST2055. This particular model includes a Quick Charge 3.0 port to juice up compatible Android devices up to 80% faster, and that promo code knocks $8 off the final price at checkout.

Your next surge protector should have USB ports too, and you can choose from three different sizes today from Bestek. Just be sure to note the promo codes below.

The successor to one of the most popular mice ever made is down to its lowest price on Amazon, while supplies last.

The Logitech MX Master Mouse comes with all the accoutrements you’d expect form a high end mouse—namely a rechargeable battery, adjustable DPI, and a dark field laser that works on glass—and a few that you wouldn’t, like a side thumb wheel for horizontal navigation and gestures, and the ability to connect over Bluetooth to three devices simultaneously.

$60 is the best price we’ve ever seen, but I wouldn’t expect it to last, so click on over to Amazon to lock in your order.

While integrated sound bars are increasingly popular options for home theater audio, if you like to kick it old school with a receiver and satellite speakers, Amazon’s top-selling receiver is down to an all-time low $198 today, or about $100 less than usual.

The Sony STRDH770 includes four HDMI inputs (all of which support 4K at 60FPS), Bluetooth streaming, and 7.2 channels of audio output. That’s a lot of bang for your buck.

This curved sound bar is easily one of the best looking I’ve ever seen, and if you own a newer Samsung TV, you can even connect it wirelessly. Today’s deal on Amazon is the lowest price ever listed, and roughly $80 less than usual, so it’s definitely worth a look if you’re still using your TV’s built-in speaker.

It’s officially spring, which means it’ll soon be time to head to your nearest pool/lake/river/stream/resevoir/ocean, and you can keep your phone safe from the elements with this $3 dry bag.

Earlier this week, our readers bought thousands of phone stands from Lamicall for $6. That deal is still available with promo code 6VGBXP2D, but now, you can get an adjustable model for $2 more with code UVUCS8E3.

Top Home Deals

This is (I hope) going to be the most boring deal I write about today, but hey, life can be kind of boring, and everyone needs to hang up pants.

While it’s certainly not as fast as the coin-operated air compressor at a gas station, this glove box-friendly compressor can save your bacon if you have to change a tire, or just can’t be bothered to find a bunch of quarters. One reviewer describes it as slighlty larger than two decks of playing cards, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding somewhere to hide it.

If you’ve ever eaten at a nice steakhouse, you were probably eating sous-vide meat. Here’s a secret though: It’s really easy to get those kinds of results yourself, and Amazon’s here to help with a $161 deal on the newest Wi-Fi version of Anova’s top-selling immersion circulator, as well as a $116 deal on the older Bluetooth model.

Update: The deal on the Bluetooth model has ended.

Lifehacker has a great explainer on Sous-Vide cooking for you to check out, but the basic idea is that you seal the food in plastic bags, and then cook it in precisely heated water over a longer period of time. It sounds weird and kind of sterile, but the result is meat that’s cooked to the exact right temperature all the way through.

We’ve seen these for less, especially around Black Friday, but these prices are the lowest they’ve dipped on Amazon this year, so go ahead and treat yourself.

If your wiper blades have seen better days, Amazon will sell you two Michelin Stealth replacements today for $20. Just add any two to your cart (shipped and sold by Amazon.com), and the price will automatically be reduced to $20 at checkout. The deal even works if you buy two different sized blades, so you should have no trouble finding a combination that fits your car.

Update: You can get a 4-pack of all large cubes for even less, again in multiple colors.

Packing cubes can make organizing clothes and toiletries for your next trip a little less hellish, and this highly-rated set of four from AmazonBasics is only $10-$11 today, depending on the color. That’s less than half the usual price, and by far an all-time low. I have a set of these, and love them.

Whether you’re burning the midnight oil, or just want a brighter workspace throughout the day, these Aukey desk lamps would make a great addition to any office.

Both include what I consider to be the most important feature in a desk lamp, the ability to change the light’s color temperature, but the $35 model includes a more unique design than its $20 cousin, in addition to a USB charging port.

The RoboVac 11 from Eufy (a division of Anker) is one of your favorite robotic vacuums, and in my own testing, it’s every bit as good (and far quieter) than my Roomba 770. If it’s been on your radar, today’s deal on Amazon is one of the best we’ve ever seen.

Despite its impressive performance, the RoboVac normally sells for over $100 less than the Roomba 650, and today on Amazon, you can get and extra $33 off its usual price. Vacuuming is the worst chore, so it’s worth every penny to pawn it off to a robot.

Amazon has a surprisingly robust platform for booking handyman and cleaning services, and for a limited time, they’re taking $30 off the service of your choice.

This discount is valid whether you’re booking someone for spring cleaning, repairing an appliance, installing a porch swing, or just about anything in between. Just pick your service, verify that Amazon services your zip code, and you’ll see the discount automatically at checkout.

You probably looked at that image up there and laughed. But let me tell you, there’s nothing funny about using the bathroom in the middle of the night and having to turn on an overhead light to see where you’re going. Because as soon as you hit that switch, you know you’re not getting back to sleep for another hour.

OxyLED’s new motion-sensing toilet lights fit on just about any toilet, and can output 12 different colors of light without wreaking havoc on your circadian rhythms. For a limited time, you can score a 2-pack for $14 with code 2OXYTN01. Note that this is a new product, so it doesn’t have many reviews yet, but our readers have purchased thousands up thousands of other motion-sensing LED products from OxyLED, so it’s a brand you can trust.

Before you go out and flush $30 down the drain on a Yeti Rambler, check out this RTIC alternative for just $10 on Amazon today, within a dollar of the best price Amazon’s ever listed. It uses the same vacuum-insulated stainless steel construction, and according to this YouTube video at least, actually keeps ice frozen for longer. No-brainer.

Note: It’s listed as an add-on item, but if you look on the sidebar for other sellers, you can buy it from RTIC directly with free (albeit slower) shipping, without adding any extra items to your cart.

Top Lifestyle Deals

Spring has officially sprung, so it’s as good a time as any to stock up on new workout clothes with today’s one-day PUMA sale on Amazon. Inside, you’ll find shoes, clothing, and accessories for men, women, and kids, all marked down to great low prices. But this is a one-day thing, so don’t dawdle.

The Fitbit Charge 2 is a truly excellent wearable, and it’s back down to $100 right now, the best price we’ve ever seen.

The Charge 2 two took the step, activity, and heart rate tracking of the original, and added a much more detailed display that can show you your texts, incoming calls, and calendar appointments like a real smart watch.

Philips’ entry-level Sonicare Essence electric toothbrush has long been a reader favorite, and now Amazon’s running the best deal we’ve seen on the sequel, the Essence+.

The big improvement here is the brush head: Rather than the screw-on E-series heads (which have a tendency to collect sludge along the seam), the Essence+ uses standard Sonicare snap-on heads. The upshot is that you get a lot more choices: Philips sells seven different options for different budgets and brushing styles.

For a limited time, Amazon’s taking $10 off the brush’s standard $40 price tag. Just be sure to clip the coupon, and note that you won’t see the final price until checkout.

Whether you’re styling your beard, going for a close shave, or washing off makeup, today’s facial grooming Gold Box has you covered.

If you make a habit of shopping at Banana Republic, GAP, Old Navy, or Athleta, you can get $10 off your next purchase with this discounted gift card (it’s branded as a Banana Republic gift card, but it’ll work at any Gap-brand store).

Since it’s just a gift card, your savings will stack with any other deals or promotions the retailers offer as well, which is good, since Gap is taking 40% off their entire site right now with promo code SPRING. The gift card includes fast email delivery, so you’ll be able to take advantage of both deals today.

Top Media Deals

It doesn’t include La La Land Moonlight, but this $12 Blu-ray does feature five Best Picture winners from the 90s and aughts. Apologies in advance, but they don’t make a version without Crash.

iTunes gift card discounts are noticeably less common than they used to be, and while we do see 20% discounts from time to time, a $100 iTunes gift card for $85 is still a solid deal if you pay for apps, movies, Apple Music, or iCloud storage.

Top Gaming Deals

Razer’s BlackWidow Ultimate Stealth V2 is a mechanical gaming keyboard that won’t wake up your neighbors, and it can be yours for an all-time low $80 today.

Beyond those tactile mechanical key switches, you get programmable backlighting (though only in green, this isn’t a Chroma model), 10 key rollover, a USB port, and a headphone jack for easy cable routing. It’s not the flashiest gaming keyboard out there, but it’s more than enough for most gamers, especially at this price.

These Xbox One S bundles aren’t discounted, but they do come with your choice of two extra games (in addition to whatever games are included in the bundle), for a limited time.

After you add a bundle to your cart, you’ll be able to choose one game from a selection of mostly crap (though Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and Rainbow Six Siege are decent options), and another game from a selection of newer, more popular titles, including Mass Effect Andromeda.

Don’t need a console? Prime members can still save 20% on physical copies of Mass Effect Andromeda (discount shown at checkout).

Update: Amazon’s also selling a $300 bundle with an Xbox One S, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Andromeda, a $10 Amazon Music Unlimited credit, and a $10 Amazon video credit. Thanks, Shiloh!

Remember Uno? We used to play it all the time when I was a kid, and Amazon’s selling decks for just $3 as an add-on item right now. I can’t promise you’ll have as much fun as the people in that photo, but it’s a solid addition to any game collection.

Is saving a little over a dollar on a $20 Xbox gift card a big deal? No, not really. But you can buy multiples, it’ll take you about 30 seconds to purchase them and add the codes to your account, and that credit is often the only way to buy DLC or certain downloadable games. So if you have an Xbox One, why not?

Tech

Storage

• WD 4TB Black My Passport Portable External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 | $113 | Amazon

Power

• Legrand - Dual USB In-Wall Charging Outlet | $12 | eBay
• Legrand - Quad USB In-Wall Charging Outlet | $20 | eBay
• RAVPower 40W 8A 4-Port USB Charging Station | $15 | Amazon | Use code LATN8U3S

Audio

• Google Home Two-Pack | $229 | B&H
• Insignia- Powered Bookshelf Speakers (Pair) | $80 | eBay
• JBL Synchros E40BT Limited Coach Edition On-Ear Bluetooth Headphone | $48 | eBay
• Crosley CR8005D-TU Cruiser Deluxe Portable 3-Speed Turntable with Bluetooth | $65 | Amazon
• Etekcity RoverBeats T16 Ultra Portable Wireless Bluetooth Speaker | $7 | Amazon | Use code 6LCNPB4R

Home Theater

Computers & Accessories

• Inspiron 15 7000 2-in-1 Laptop (Core i7, 8GB, 1TB, Win10) | $650 | Dell | Use code 50OFF699
• D-Link Wi-Fi AC750 Dual Band Range Extender (DAP-1520) | $20 | Amazon
• Linksys WRT3200ACM Dual-Band Wireless-AC3200 Gigabit | $160 | B&H
• KOZMICC Black/Red Neoprene Sleeve Case with Handle for 13" - 13.3" Inch Laptop | $11 | Amazon
• 25' Cat 6 Flat Ethernet Cable | $5 | amazon | Use code MDZLTWXD
• iClever Ultra-Slim USB 3.0 [Faster Data Transfer] External CD/DVD-RW Drive | $22 | Amazon | Use code CGICDVD5
• Unitek 3-Port USB 3.0 HUB + RJ45 1000 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter | $10 | Amazon | Use code SYBVAFHG

PC Parts

• SanDisk 240GB Internal SATA SSD Plus | $65 | Best Buy
• Patriot Torch SE High Performance 256GB 2.5" SSD | $62 | Amazon
• Avexir Core Series 16GB DDR4 2400 Desktop Memory Module | $80 | Amazon

Mobile Devices

• Pandemic: The Board Game | $2 | Apple
• Pandemic: The Board Game | $2 | Google
• Ticwatch 2 Smartwatch - Charcoal Smart Watch for iOS and Android Devices | $170 | Amazon | Use Code U5BGAJQ6
• ZTE Trek 2 HD K88 Wi-Fi GSM AT&T Unlocked 8" Android Tablet | $60 | eBay
• Tile Slim | $25 | Amazon
• Tile Mate 4-Pack | $60 | Amazon

Photography

• Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Autofocus Wide Angle Telephoto Zoom Lens | $519 | Adorama

Home

• Nine Stars 13.2 & 2.1-Gallon Touchless Automatic Motion Sensor Trash Can, Set of 2 | $45 | Amazon
• BISSELL PowerGlide Bagless Pet Upright Vacuum | $100 | Best Buy
• AmazonBasics 4-Piece Packing Cube Set - 2 Medium and 2 Large | $11 | Amazon
• Closet Light, Oak Leaf Rechargeable DIY Stick-on Anywhere Portable 20 LED Wireless Motion Sensing Under Cabinet Lighting | $14 | Amazon | Use code I7KFBU7W
• WisHome LED Night Light with Automatic Dusk to Dawn Sensor and 5V 2A Dual USB | $11 | Amazon | Use Code YD94CIF
• BISSELL Spot & Stain Fabric and Upholstery Cleaner, 9351 | $4 | Amazon
• 4-Pack Kohree Automatic LED Night Light Plug-in Wall light With Dusk to Dawn Sensor | $14 | Amazon | Use code SBSFZM6K
• OxyLED S101 Motion Activated Bed Light | $12 | Amazon | Use code 1OXYS101
• 20 Packs Open Ended Pant Hanger | $17 | Amazon | Use code G5LGSB5O
• AUKEY 10W Desk Lamp with USB Charging Port, Dimmable Brightness Adjustment | $35 | Amazon | Use code AUKEYT39
• AUKEY 8W LED Table Lamp with 3 Lighting Modes | $20 | Amazon | Use code AUKEYT19

Kitchen

• Black & Decker - 12-Cup Coffeemaker | $25 | eBay
• K cup coffee maker, single serve coffee machine | $30 | Amazon | Use code U9FJVWQ3
• Mr. Coffee Grinder | $11 | MrCoffee
• Samsung MS14K6000AS 1.4 cu. ft. Countertop Microwave Oven with Sensor and Ceramic Enamel Interior, Stainless Steel | $119 | Amazon
• Mixing Bowls Set, X-Chef Professional Stainless Steel Mixing Bowls With Lids, Set of 5 | $27 | Amazon | Use code XPSKLXT8
• Veego Chalkboard Labels, 80 PCS Premium Chalk Stickers with 2 Pink/White Smooth Liquid Chalk Pens | $8 | Amazon | Use code 34VMQFWE
• Anova Sous-Vide Precision Cooker Wi-Fi 900W | $161 | Amazon
• Anova Sous-Vide Precision Cooker Bluetooth 800W | $116 | Amazon

Tools & Auto

• Craftsman 2 1/4 Ton Jack Stands Pair | $30 | Sears
• JEGS Performance Products 30 PC Screwdriver Set | $8 | eBay
• HP F800X Full HD with Touch Screen Car Dash Cam | $80 | eBay
• Mpow CD Slot Car Mount | $8 | Amazon | Use code UTHUNJ6R
• AUKEY Dash Cam, Full HD 1080P, 170° Wide Angle Lens | $55 | Amazon | Use code AUKDASH1
• Suaoki Mini Air Compressor | $19 | Amazon | Promo code HFMEHUB5

Lifestyle

Apparel

• Up to 50% Off PUMA Athletic Shoes & Clothing | Amazon
• Mountain Hardwear Strecker Lite Jacket - Men’s | $45 | REI
• Versace V1969 Abbigliamento Sportivo SRL Deluxe Folding Umbrella 3-Pack | $38 | eBay

Beauty & Grooming

• Panasonic EH-XC10-N Micro-Foaming Facial Cleansing Brush with Warming Makeup Removal Plate, 20.16 Ounce | $100 | Amazon
• Wahl Lithium Ion 2.0 Trimmer #9886 | $40 | Amazon
• Panasonic ES-LT41-K Arc3 Wet Dry Electric Razor, Men’s 3-Blade Cordless with Flexible Pivoting Head, Wet/Dry | $60 | Amazon
• Panasonic Hair and Beard Trimmer, Men’s, with 39 Adjustable Trim Settings and Two Comb Attachments for Beard and Hair, Corded or Cordless Operation, ER-GB60-K | $40 | Amazon

Camping & Outdoors

• Hausbell Nontoxic Mosquito Trap | $8 | Amazon | Use code XYU6GFUT

Media

Movies & TV

• Best Picture Academy Award Winners (5-Film Collection) | $12 | Amazon
• Hellboy [SteelBook] | $10 | Best Buy
• Boyz ‘N the Hood [SteelBook] | $10 | Best Buy
• Ghostbusters [Steelbook] | $10 | Best Buy
• Ghostbusters: Answer the Call [SteelBook] | $10 | Best Buy
• TMNT: Out of the Shadows [SteelBook] | $10 | Best Buy
• The Iron Giant: Signature Edition | $9 | Amazon

Books

• The 7th Canon [Audible] | $5 | Amazon
• Just Grace [Kindle] | $1 | Amazon

Gaming

Peripherals

• Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Stealth V2 - Backlit Quiet Mechanical Gaming Keyboard with 10 Key Rollover | $80 | Amazon
• Steam Controller Carrying Case | $6 | Amazon

PC

• THQ Nordic Week Sale at The Humble Store
• Spring Surprise Box 2017 [PC DOWNLOAD] | $10 | Square Enix Online Store
• Mortal Kombat XL | $9 | BundleStars

PlayStation 4

• Battlefield 1 Early Enlister Deluxe Edition | $40 | Amazon
• Titanfall 2 | $25 | Amazon

Xbox One

• Dead Rising 4 | $30 | Best Buy
• Gears of War 4 | $30 | Best Buy
• Xbox One S 1TB Console - Gears of War 4 Bundle | $240 | eBay

Board Games

• Monopoly Here & Now Game | $6 | Toysrus

Toys

• XYZprinting Da Vinci 3D Pen | $20 | Newegg
• BOOMco Halo Covenant Needler Blaster | $24 | Amazon

You will never be able to enjoy the fun—and easy—question “What’s the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything?” again. Not once you’ve seen Senator Ted Cruz start off the confirmation hearing of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, with it.

It’s partly so that Cruz can trot out a pop culture reference in a way that has become de rigueur for politicians trying to show how “with it” they are. Some pull it off. Others... do not.

Here’s the difference: Congressman David Cicilline made a Stranger Things reference as part of a speech, using pop culture to illustrate a point. It was absolutely cheesy, but it served a purpose as a metaphor, and was made in his own words.

Meanwhile, Cruz brought up Hitchhikers as a softball non-question for a Supreme Court nominee. It’s not just sucking up, it’s a signal that nothing substantive is going to come from either party in this hearing, that “Hey, we’re all such good friends we’re just going to make jokes together.” The obviously pre-determined reference also allowed Gorsuch tell a “funny” story about how he likes to ask that question when he swears new lawyers into the bar.

Cruz is using a pop culture reference to make Gorsuch likable as a person, instead of investigating his character and abilities as a judge.

I would also like everyone to enjoy the irony of these two men quoting Douglas Adams, who was a) an atheist b) an environmental activist. I’m sure that his words being read out and explained by Ted Cruz is exactly what he would have wanted.

Mass Effect: Andromeda sprawls and sprawls, eagerly offering you so much to see and do that it nearly loses itself in the process. In this massive and uncertain voyage into an alien galaxy, the best way to center yourself is to hold on to other people, and trust that the mission will accomplish at least some of its ambitious goals.

In Bioware’s new third-person action RPG, you play as Ryder, a human adventurer who lives in an advanced society capable of faster-than-light space travel. Andromeda is the fourth entry in the Mass Effect series, and while some of the aliens and politics make a return, the whole thing unfolds in a different setting that is friendly to franchise newcomers. Ryder is a part of the “Andromeda Initiative,” a group of explorers who leave the Milky Way in search of a new frontier: the Heleus Cluster. The expedition is a demanding trek that requires 600 years of travel, during which members of the Initiative are put into cryogenic stasis—to be a part of it is to leave everything behind, without certainty that you’ll ever go back.

Once Ryder and their colleagues arrive, everyone is shocked to discover that the “golden worlds” they scouted aren’t nearly as habitable as they had hoped. The region also turns out to be overrun with a hostile species called the “Kett,” and despite optimistic hopes for first contact, they are not interested in making peace. Worse, nearly every logistic involved with the trip goes wrong: some ships arrive a year ahead of time, while other “arks” containing entire species are lost and unaccounted for. Supplies for those already in the area are dwindling, and tensions around these complications burst into revolts, with some of the Initiative exiled to dangerous planets.

Within the first hour, the player is awarded the title of “Pathfinder,” that is, someone who must direct humanity to planets suitable for colonization. You will, of course, wonder if such a huge responsibility can rest on the shoulders of a mere soldier, but the question of leadership—who earns it, whether or not someone can be ready for it, and what defines an inspiring leader—is a running theme throughout Andromeda.

The ingredients for an exciting game are all there, but Andromeda’s structure slows the beginning’s momentum. Where older games kept a tight pace, Andromeda overwhelms you with choice on every planet you visit. When you arrive in a new locale, you can talk to an extraordinary number of people, but they don’t always have something meaningful to say. I went into Andromeda hungry to learn all about a new race called the Angara, as Mass Effect games have historically been great at fleshing out believable societies of alien races. But Andromeda’s inconsistent writing beats the player over the head with the idea that the Angara have large families to the point that what could be a culture-defining characteristic instead feels like repetitive writing that keeps telling instead of shutting up some and just showing.

On a more fundamental level, the series’ signature multiple choice dialogue wheel now feels dated. In the last few years we’ve seen an array of games such as Oxenfree and the Mr. Robot mobile game explore the dynamic, lively rhythms of conversation, but Mass Effect is content to have people standing awkwardly in front of each other, taking turns exchanging ideas that you pick from a dialogue wheel. Many years ago, this method of presenting conversation put Bioware at the forefront of narrative-driven games, but now, it feels like they are lagging in a revolution they helped start. Thanks to stilted voice acting and strange editing that makes characters deliver lines at odd intervals, some conversations just don’t feel natural. Mass Effect has you talking to people for hours, but it hardly reflects how real people talk.

Still, the dialogue has improved in one key way: you’re no longer railroaded into picking between good “Paragon” and bad “Renegade” choices. Instead, you can choose a variety of different tones that do not lock you into any specific morality. Mass Effect: Andromeda constantly asks you to reflect on what you stand for, and through your choices, asks you to impart values on a nascent society looking to you for direction. What will you teach them? Will humanity be a ruthless, self-interested invader, or will they make new allies and build their trust?

The more people you talk to, the more quests you acquire, and the more things spin out of control. The first problem is partially in presentation: tracking quests is a nightmare. A confusing user interface requires you to sort through multiple nested menus that make it hard to find what you want. Will a quest someone just told you about appear under the specific planet it takes place in? The quest-giver seemed friendly, so will his or her request go under the “Allies” menu? Oh, that quest sounded important, will it go into “Priority Ops”? Even after playing for dozens of hours, I still regularly fumble in finding what I want. I had to keep a separate list of what I wanted to tackle and how, and even then, the entire thing felt overwhelming.

Complicating things further is the “Additional tasks” category, which, when compared to other types, make these quests sound like busywork. Paradoxically, the flavor text of non-priority missions still promised world-building and character studies, which are crucial to making the player care about anything. When a quest asks you to collect 10 plants, it doesn’t sound worth your time, no? What about when it asks you to scan 10 pieces of salvage hailing from one of the key missing ships? That sounds like it could be important, right? Surprise, it’s not. And that quest that you thought sounded like nothing, hey, it actually has a well-written character that ties the whole place together. You never know, and that’s part of the problem.

The mere act of finding what actually matters in Andromeda, and figuring out in what order to complete it, reminded me of the helpless dread that comes with tackling an inbox full of email. Even when the contents are kickass, wading through it and prioritizing is so mentally taxing that it saps the joy of what comes next. Proper pacing and maintaining a sharp sense of purpose is impossible when the player has trouble figuring out where to even start, or how to progress beyond main story missions.

As the game is supposed to be about building a new home, I prioritized colonization missions. My assumption was that the inevitable crisis down the line would be determined by my preparation, and that humanity’s survival in this new galaxy depended on how “viable” I made planets. Helpfully, the game even gives you a specific percentage tracking this viability stat across locales, all of which contribute to an overall “AVP” number and level. Before you can set up an outpost, you have to rank up viability to a certain percentage by dealing with whatever pressing issues plague a planet: one area, for example, might be drowning in scavengers that you must clear out before you can live there.

Terraforming harsh planets into liveable ones requires going to monoliths left behind by a mysterious civilization called the “Remnant.” To find them, you must strap into the Nomad, Andromeda’s hardy new vehicle. You will spend a lot of time traveling across vast distances on the Nomad: while there aren’t many planets to land on in Andromeda, the ones you can land on are enormous. I spent way too long having fun trying to climb extreme mountain ranges, though some of that exploration was hampered by stuttering and texture pop-in.

Remnant monoliths offer a familiar structure: you shoot some futuristic looking enemies, you jump around platforms looking for “glyphs,” and you use those glyphs to decrypt consoles that give you access into whatever lies inside. Decryption involves a Sudoku-like puzzle that I have come to abhor. In more complicated puzzles, I found myself fussing over alien symbols for upwards of an hour, a process that sucked away any potential excitement from terraforming new planets.

Unlocking monoliths gives you access to the big Remnant Vaults, which are dungeons that look and play more or less the same. At times, the platforming and puzzles contained within felt too simplistic, with your magic “omni tool” scanning always unearthing the path forward. Other times, the “puzzles” felt inscrutable and under explained, and I only solved them through trial and error. Nonetheless I went through this arduous process time and time again to build new outposts, because the game told me I needed to provide space for settlers frozen in cryo. Deciding who got to defrost is presented as a monumental choice, the sort of thing that broadcasts what kind of settlers we would be. I tried to defrost a healthy balance of military, scientific, and trading settlers, but as far as I can tell, the only thing they provided me were occasional bonuses that I never actually needed. The order and number didn’t seem to matter in the long run. Given that Andromeda’s raison d’etre is supposed to be finding and building a new home, the mechanics feel inconsequential, or are too abstracted into mere numbers and percentages.

I was particularly let down by the stock outposts we set up, which are so barebones, they hardly compare to franchise-defining locations, such as Mass Effect 2’s Omega. The fact everything looks like space Ikea makes sense from a story perspective—of course we can’t just immediately build a cool new city, we just got here!—but it does mean that this Mass Effect lacks some of its predecessors’ flair. My hope is that we get to see these outposts blossom across more games, but that’s not the Mass Effect I got to play this time.

Thankfully, Mass Effect: Andromeda’s combat is stellar, and that’s good, because you do lots of it as you explore the world. In prior games, you picked a class that helped determined your abilities. Andromeda, on the other hand, allows you to pick “profiles” that determine affinities. Profiles can be turned on or off at your leisure, depending on how you want to play, and they determine everything from added weapon power to how long your special “biotic” powers last. From there, you can mix and match abilities from all class types. I primarily played with a charge ability, which crashed Ryder into enemies for massive damage, a “Shockwave” ability that sends enemies flying into the air, and finally, a summoning ability that brought extra firepower in the form of a drone. I wouldn’t be able to build a character like this in older games, or in most RPGs. The freedom is liberating.

Even when fighting against stock enemies, every encounter feels gratifying. Ryder can dash with the press of a button, which is useful both for avoiding enemy attacks, and darting around the field. Combined with my charging ability, I could come face-to-face with enemies within a split second, where I’d melee and shotgun them into oblivion. Charging also regenerates my shield, so I played more aggressively as I became critically damaged, rather than hiding behind cover. Ryder can vault up in the air and hover while shooting, allowing you to maneuver around enemy cover with ease. The cover system itself is finicky, given that Ryder sticks to it automatically (or not!), but my build specifically rewards navigating around it, so it was never a big deal. Other playstyles may not have the same experience.

While it’s possible to combo attacks together for massive damage, you can no longer pause to tell your companions to do specific moves, eliminating some of the tactical rigor that defined older games. In its stead, Andromeda asks you to think on your feet, to use your reflexes. It’s a thrilling change that turns Mass Effect into a fast-paced shooter, though it’s not devoid of of strategic elements. Andromeda allows you to craft three types of weapons, all of which can be modified on a more granular level. I ran around with a Remnant assault rifle that didn’t use ammo, but instead overheated after too much use, as well as a Plasma shotgun that fired off floaty yet potent bullets. Both had been fitted special barrels, stocks, scopes, and so on, all so that these weapons could complement my in-game techniques.

It took me many hours of navigating confusing menus and sifting through a staggering amount of raw materials before I understood how to make good weapons. The game quickly throws everything at you— a high volume of quests, the ample profile and ability choices, the giant maps, the unwieldy crafting—and it takes a long time to fully wrap your head around how everything works. I made a conscious decision to keep myself from drowning by focusing on the ship’s crew, as relationships have been the cornerstone of Bioware games.

Much has been made of Andromeda’s facial animations, and while I still contend that the silly GIFs and footage shared before release were blown out of proportion or taken out of context, some hiccups are harder to overlook than others. When a conversation with an inexpressive NPC is interesting, I don’t mind that their face isn’t super emotive. When you’re about to bang someone—which of course you can do in this famously romance-and-sex-filled series—stoic body language and movement kills any sense of intimacy built by your conversations. During one major story mission, I watched as two major characters fused with one another in a cutscene. In a touching scene meant to cap off a friendship, Andromeda bizarrely attached a gun to a character’s hand. The exchange became unintentionally hilarious, and while it wasn’t harmful, it did make it difficult to focus on what was being said.

Despite all of this, the overall experience wasn’t ruined.

Of all the things in the game, I marveled most at what Bioware accomplished with this game’s big cast of characters. You can take allies with you on missions, where they provide additional firepower and have plenty of banter, but that’s not what impressed me. Andromeda’s characters shine brightest during downtime, away from the action. As you progress through quests, characters constantly remark on where they’re at and how they feel, even if not tied to major story missions. The ship has a public message board, where people write to each other and make plans without you. As you walk around on your ship, you can hear conversations playing out all around you. People riff on who must have left the food out. They bicker about ugly unclaimed sweaters left in the laundry. They decide to make a religious study group.

When you explore cities, the other characters do too: I ran into my allies at the bar, in the market, in the commons. Dozens of hours into my playthrough, I was shocked to learn that one character had their own apartment. Even within the ship itself, characters are not always in the same place—you have to look for them if you want to talk to them. To top all of this off, everyone sends you email at random intervals. I walked away feeling as if everyone had their own interior lives, that they existed beyond the scope of when I chose to acknowledge them.

It took me a while to warm up to the characters, but that’s partially baggage. The core trilogy had three games to define its kickass characters, whereas everyone is starting from scratch in Andromeda.The comparisons don’t quite feel fair. They will happen anyway. I had a complicated dynamic with Cora, the second-in-command who, according to protocol, was supposed to get the Pathfinder title over a schmuck like me. She didn’t, and that made conversations kinda awkward—that’s not a feeling games explore very often. The Asari PeeBee, ever curious and impulsive, felt like a volatile personality next to the cool and collected Asari aliens I’d met in previous games. With Suvi, the ship’s scientific expert, I found myself exploring the role of spirituality in a society obsessed with science. My favorite new character has to be Jaal, the Angaran with surprisingly raw insecurities about his place in the world.

I wasn’t quite as drawn to the rest of the crew, but I didn’t always have to be. It feels weird to say, but I loved how much some characters clashed with one another, because it made them seem like actual people. Even when everyone works toward a common goal on a team, philosophies may not always match up, which can lead to tension. Andromeda explores those pressure points, allows you to see how people grow and learn to work with one another. It can be messy, or it can be heartwarming. At one point, a crew member wanted to start a movie night to lift everyone’s spirits, but nearly every single person had differing ideas on how to make it happen. What initially appears as a simple mission to pick up items expands into an epic, multi-part quest quest to make everyone happy.

At times, the core of Andromeda can seem hollow. I balked at the naivete and entitlement in thinking 100,000 people could just start a new life in a home that does not belong to them. I didn’t understand the Initiative’s belief that all of the races of the Milky Way could just sweep their complicated histories under a rug to start anew. It was as if Silicon Valley was trying to sell me on the idea that a hot new app would somehow stop world hunger. Something just didn’t add up here. These narratives are interrogated and become complicated, but only if you pursue the right quests. It took many, many hours, but eventually I found myself contending with Angaran anger over human colonization. And, without spoiling anything, collecting all the “memories” scattered across the world completely changed what I understood about the Initiative. Andromeda’s biggest flaw is in giving the player so much choice, that it’s incredibly easy to miss the crux of what makes the game good.

The plot and structure of Mass Effect: Andromeda can be viewed as a metaphor for the game itself, where a population eager for a fresh start makes a leap into a new frontier. The destination isn’t the paradise we hoped for. For our characters, Andromeda required a leap of faith, the belief that the universe must hold more for humanity. Nobody anticipated how much work building a new home would really take, and in a way, the entire game is about mitigating everyone’s disappointment. The truth is that Andromeda itself isn’t the promised land players hoped for either, but there is a lot that’s good in this flawed new frontier for Mass Effect. The question is: will you play long enough to find it?

A pregnant woman hires a new nanny to care for her autistic young son—and that’s when the trouble begins in Madre, a chilling horror movie from writer-director Aaron Burns. It premiered at this year’sSXSW and will be streaming on Netflix later this year, and we talked to the director about his breakout film.

Burns—also an actor whose credits being devoured by cannibals in his frequent associate Eli Roth’s Green Inferno—offers insight into his inspiration in this festival interview with our colleague at Fusion, Dan Ilic.

Today, president Donald Trump signed S.442, aka the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2017, which authorizes $19.5 billion in funding for the agency in 2018. The bill emphasizes the importance of human spaceflight and exploring the solar system—but says nothing about the president’s plan to slash NASA’s entire educational department.

“I’m delighted to sign this bill,” Trump told reporters. “It’s been a long time since a bill like this has been signed, reaffirming our national commitment to the core mission of NASA, human space exploration, space science and technology.”

Trump’s comments during the bill signing are by far the most our new president has said about NASA since he’s taken office. The bill reaffirms NASA’s commitment to sending crewed missions to Mars and emphasizes commercial partnerships, including the Commercial Crew Program through which NASA hopes to start launching American astronauts into space off US soil as soon as next year. After the signing, vice president Mike Pence also reiterated the president’s plan to resurrect the National Space Council, which has, in the past, counseled the president on aerospace related endeavors.

That’s all fine. But the real highlight of the press event was when Trump turned to alleged zodiac killer Texas Senator Ted Cruz and asked if he’d be up for the job of space exploration. Cruz, who’s handled much conflict in his time in the public spotlight—from losing the Republican primary to donning this questionable Phantom of the Opera costume—was not up for the task. Or was he?

“We could send congress into space,” he replied sheepishly. By definition, that means he’s going up there, too.

Whether or not Cruz blasts himself off into space (fingers crossed), S.442 thankfully spared NASA’s earth science program—at least, it makes no mention of it one way or another. Considering Earth is the planet we currently live on and we’ve done a shit job taking care of it, we should probably be grateful this vital function of NASA isn’t being scrapped entirely.

Unfortunately, Ted Cruz still lives here, but if all goes according to plan, he and the rest of congress will eventually become residents of the final frontier.

Sadly, it’s probably not Wild Thing.

Today’s Marvel solicits didn’t just give us a new look at Doctor Octopus’ return to Amazing Spider-Man. We also have one hell of a tease for something to come in one of the new X-Men comics, X-Men: Blue—one that Marvel is very much wanting you to think involves a potential return for Wolverine to the Marvel comicsverse.

Yes, while there’s Laura Kinney as the All-New Wolverine running around, and even Old Man Logan in the X-Books, the “original” Logan has been absent since he died in 2014's Death of Wolverine story arc, encased in a draping of Adamantium after his healing factor gave out for good. But the two newly revealed covers for X-Men: Blue’s fifth and sixth issues both feature a blurred out mysterious clawed character with the young X-Team, now lead by Jean Grey.

The intent here is clear—the pixellation strong enough to obscure the identity, but not quite strong enough to hide the fact that it’s a character with Wolverine-style retractable claws. Given that Wolverine is resurgent within the public consciousness again thanks to Logan’s success, it’s easy to assume Marvel is not-so-subtly teasing a revival of one its most beloved fallen mutants.

But here’s the thing: Wolverine ain’t the only hero around in the Marvelverse with claws like that. Beyond the obvious ones like X-23, there’s Daken, Romulus, hell, even myriad other alternate-universe Wolverines that could be potential candidates. The solicitation for X-Men: Blue #5 even states that Ms. Sinister, the female clone of long time X-Men foe Mr. Sinister, is in the issue, and the Sinisters are well known for creating clones of other mutants. It could be a clone of the original Wolverine, or Old Man Logan, and nothing else.

But for now, we’ll have to wait and see what the issue cooks up. X-Men: Blue #5 is set to hit shelves in June.

[CBR]