Starship Castle

It’s June, which means temperatures are up and it’s time for grill out at least twice a week. It also means that most of our favorite TV shows have wrapped up their seasons, and won’t be back for a few months.

Fortunately, Sci Fi Wire has a list of every sci-fi and fantasy show putting out new episodes this summer.

Some of them sound like duds (a brown dwarf star collides with the moon? really? I think we’d have bigger problems than the moon’s suddenly decaying orbit), but a few have me excited.

Merlin, on NBC, will hopefully be a good source for epic fantasy, and SyFy’s Warehouse 13 has a premise that reminds me of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Storm is just a miniseries event, but it sounds like it’ll be interesting.

Most movies, no matter how dark, have at least a few funny bits (whether or not they’re intentional). Some, though, really stand out. io9’s made a list of what they think are the ten greatest sci-fi comedies.

Some are obvious choices (Spaceballs squeaks in at #10, and Army of Darkness and Shaun of the Dead share a spot). Some real gems show up on the list, though.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home appears at #4, appropriately, pulling double-duty as a great comedy and one of the better Star Trek movies. And while Groundhog Day isn’t usually thought of as sci-fi, its time-travel element qualifies it for the list.

Mystery Men and Galaxy Quest are probably the funniest movies on the list that don’t have mainstream popularity, but Ghostbusters and Back to the Future may be the “greatest” movies on the list.