The coordinates are set and the TIME TUNNEL is ready to take you back to the year when aliens invaded Earth (several times), Doctor Who attempted a comeback, and Superman’s co-creator returned to Krypton!

Film Focus

Independence Day put Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin on the movie map. They’d previously produced the overblown B-movie Stargate in 1994 (the TV spin-offs are still running), and it was during the publicity tour for that film that director Emmerich came up with the idea for his Earth-invasion tale.

Maybe he caught a repeat of the TV mini-series V, as his blockbuster movie was criticised over similarities, especially in the opening sequence of flying saucers hovering over international landmarks. The film confirmed Will Smith’s growing star status, following the Bad Boys movies, and gave the actor a taste for SF and fantasy (Men in Black, I, Robot, Wild, Wild West, I Am Legend).

I remember watching this movie for the first time with a paying audience in the US — interactive cinema doesn’t begin to cover it. So caught up in the battle between the superior US forces and the aliens were these Floridians they were whooping at the screen, cheering characters on and yelling at them as if it would help Smith and co beat the aliens. That was far weirder than anything in the movie, including Brent Spiner’s wacky hair.


Other Movies

Horror went self-referential (and not for the first time) with Wes Craven’s Scream in 1996. A self-aware horror film (the characters discussed the ‘rules’ of the horror movie, while still falling victim to them), Scream led to two sequels with a fourth instalment just entering production. Horror was also played for laughs in Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn, starring screenwriter Quentin Tarantino and E.R.’s George Clooney.

With two TV shows still on air (Deep Space Nine and Voyager) there was a glut of Star Trek in 1996 as The Next Generation crew returned to the big screen in the Borgbuster Star Trek: First Contact. Meanwhile, Earth was invaded by cartoon Martians in Tim Burton’s romp Mars Attacks!, based on a series of 1960s trading cards. Ack! Ack!

Sean Connery was the voice of a CGI dragon in the otherwise unpromising Dragonheart, while future Lord of the Rings director (and former master of splatter) Peter Jackson made his mark on Hollywood with supernatural thriller The Frighteners, starring Michael J. Fox. Escape from L.A. proved to be an unwanted sequel, while The Island of Dr Moreau proved to be simply unwanted (you can read Richard Stanley’s stories about the production here).

There were also (a scattering of) laughs to be had from Multiplicity, in which ex-Batman Michael Keaton was ‘photocopied’ with diminishing returns in intelligence.


Oddball Flick

Worst SF, fantasy or horror movie of 1996 was easily Mary Reilly, a retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde story (following blockbuster Dracula and Frankenstein movies) told from the maid’s point of view, starring a wan Julia Roberts. At least part of it was actually shot in Edinburgh.

Based on a 1990 novel by Valerie Martin, the film — although a brave attempt — failed to connect with horror hungry audiences. John Malkovich’s turn as Jekyll/Hyde really didn’t help matters, nor did the production delays and reports of fights between the two stars.

Television

In TV SF, 3rd Rock From the Sun made its debut, as did The Pretender, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Early Edition and Chris Carter’s Millennium.

Continuing shows included Red Dwarf, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Lois and Clark, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Sliders and The X-Files. This was the year of the ill-fated, American-produced Doctor Who TV movie starring Paul McGann as the one-shot Eighth Doctor (he’s enjoyed a long afterlife on audio). The hoped-for series failed to materialise, and fans had to wait until 2005 for Christopher Eccleston and Russell T. Davies to revamp the venerable show and take it to new heights of popularity.


Books

Flash Forward author Robert J. Sawyer won the Aurora Award for Best English Novel of 1996, but the Hugo went to Neal Stephenson for The Diamond Age, a post-cyberpunk thriller.

Other significant books released in 1996 were Voyage, Steven Baxter’s alternative retelling of the space race, Iain Banks’ Culture novel Excession, Greg Egan’s hard SF novel Distress, and William Gibson’s Idoru that saw a man marry a artificial intelligence pop star. Stephen King published The Green Mile, while George R. R. Martin released A Game of Thrones, soon to be a TV series.

Christopher Priest’s tangled tale of rival magicians The Prestige was published, and later made into a film by Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan. Kim Stanley Robinson completed his epic Mars trilogy with Blue Mars, and Mary Dora Russell won wide acclaim for The Sparrow. Fantasy author Tim Powers told an unusual ghost story in Expiration Date, in which the ghost of Thomas Edison inhabits a young boy in contemporary Los Angeles.

Comics

Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman ended its long run this year on #75, while Marvel Comics filed for bankruptcy at the end of 1996.

As well as Jerry Siegel, the comic industry lost some notable people including Bernard Baily, Tarzan artist Burne Hogarth, Superman artist Curt Swann and Disney writer/artist Carl Fallberg. Two younger contributors to the art and business of comics also died: Batman Adventures’ artist Mark Parobeck died from diabetes at only 30, and Marvel writer/editor Mark Gruenwald at 43.

In December of 1996 a long awaited event took place when Clark Kent finally married Lois Lane in DC’s Superman: The Wedding Album.

Notable 1996 Births

Among the future stars born in 1996 were Abigail Breslin (Signs) and Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road). Madeline Carroll has been seen in several TV shows, including Night Stalker and Lost, as well as providing a voice for Astro Boy, while many more actors whose names we probably won’t recognise for a good few years yet were born in 1996. These future celebrities probably include the children of the already famous, among them Stella Banderas, Alexandra Astin and Morgan Eastwood, all born in 1996.


Notable 1996 Deaths

Among those checking out in 1996 were Italian gore-master Lucio Fulci, B-movie veteran Lew Ayres (Salem’s Lot), third Doctor Jon Pertwee, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn’s Bibi Besch, the original Star Trek’s Sarek Mark Lenard, blockbuster movie producer Don Simpson, Metropolis’s robot Maria (and inspiration for C-3PO) Brigitte Helm, Mission: Impossible star Greg Morris, Superman co-creator (with Joel Shuster) Jerry Siegel, Bond producer Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, Blade Runner cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, Plan Nine From Outer Space’s Lyle Talbot and John ‘Bunny’ Breckinridge, and I Was a Teenage Werewolf’s Whit Bissell.

The Real World

In 1996 chess super-computer Deep Blue beat human champion Gary Kasparov for the first time, the most recent IRA ceasefire came to an end with a series of London and Manchester bombings, and Thomas Hamilton killed 16 nursery school children and one teacher in Dunblane. Bill Clinton won a second term in the Whitehouse, while fear of possible BSE transmission to humans grew. Braveheart won Best Picture at the Oscars, and acclaimed astronomer and TV presenter Carl Sagan died.

By Brian J. Robb