Hello Redshirt team!
We're in the midst of our 1985 season and it's time to find our community pick - the film that you choose, that we will watch and then discuss in an upcoming bonus episode.
Have a thorough read of the options below, consider everything with extraordinary care and attention, and then make your choice. We'll be closing the poll at midnight on Saturday 22nd November.
Your kids are gonna love it...
Back To The Future! Our 1985 season begins in earnest this week with Dave's pick of the year, Robert Zemeckis' layered, heartfelt time-travelling adventure (although do go and listen to our Goonies bonus episode if you can...)
BTTF is a perfect fit with several films the pod has already absorbed, a "Spielberg-ing" of early 1980s life that like ET (and The Goonies) presents a world beset by adult problems to which only children have the answers. Dens...
2025-11-17 12:16:16 +0000 UTC View PostHey you guys! 1985 season is upon us, and you know what that means? It means it's our time. Our time to watch The Goonies.
This is a film that Rob and Dave love so much that they couldn't risk its inclusion on a public vote. A film about friendships, childhood, and adventure, and plugged in to a specific nostalgia for a specific time, when no adults seemed to be watching, and wherever you wanted to be most in the world was only a BMX ride away.
Also, we do some weird ...
Morning all,
Two quick messages this morning! Our bonus episode has been hit by sickness, so we'll be rescheduling that to later this week. We're not sure exactly when this will be, but we'll have it out before the weekend. Apologies for the delay!
But, I hear you ask, what is the bonus episode? Well, the answer to that and other admittedly quite limited questions about timing and episode subjects can be found below, in our gleaming and fresh November episode schedule....
By Nathan Ditum
Hello dear Redshirts to this, the 12th edition of the Civilian Observer. It’s the latest edition, in both senses - we have become irregular in putting these out during a busy few months, which we’ll remedy either with several Civilian Observers, or a bonus something for the Ensign tier (do you want a livestream of the Return Of The King game? Gollum off in the comments).
We shall be covering multiple topics in this Civ Obs, as no-one is calling them...
We're taking a long overdue look inside the Redshirt Cinema Club mailbag this week (please keep emailing us, we do read them, promise) before kicking off our new mini season by each selecting our favourite movie of 1985, in celebration of the year Dave was born. This has caused alarm for a couple of reasons: firstly it's made us realise a number of our favourite movies are now, like Dave, 40 years old and secondly it turns out Rob has only seen two movies released in this year. Time to fix th...
2025-11-10 09:42:20 +0000 UTC View PostMan is the warmest place to hide this week, as our John Carpenter mini-season comes to a spectacular, gushing climax with 1982’s The Thing. Is Jed the dog the best dog actor ever? Could speaking Norwegian have solved this whole business in 5 minutes? And who - if anyone - is human by the end? Let’s find out
Also for those interested, links to a couple of Thing-related videos we mention in the pod:
2025-11-03 09:45:29 +0000 UTC
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Hello and welcome to Redshirt Cinema Club, a weekly podcast transmitting from the year 1999...
Commanders, this week’s bonus episode features a movie just waiting to inflict existential trauma, with the conventions of science and religion overturned, an eerie atmosphere of the unknowable, and something ancient materialising in the basement…
Let’s discuss Prince of Darkness.
2025-10-29 06:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostSnake? Snaaaaaaake!
Hello and welcome to Redshirt Cinema Club, a weekly podcast about smoking, apparently.
In the distant future of the year 1997, Manhattan has become a super prison, the president of the USA has crash landed inside, and only one man has tight enough trousers and good enough arms to break him out again. This is John Carpenter’s Escape From New York…
2025-10-27 06:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostDeath has come to your little podcast, Redshirts...
Halloween has come early, which is only fair as two of us are coming very late to Halloween, John Carpenter's genre-setting 1978 teen slasher classic.
The adults are all busy at boring grown-up parties, the teens are constantly on the phone and swapping houses, and Michael Myers - inscrutable killer, embodiment of evil, and provider of cheap Halloween costume options for several generations - has been to the hardware store and i...
2025-10-20 06:21:31 +0000 UTC View Post“How can weather be scary?” is the question posed by today’s film, John Carpenter’s 1980 West-coast horror, The Fog. Luckily the film also provides the answer, which is to fill the weather with pirate zombie lepers. No, really.
It turns out we basically love John Carpenter movies.
Also included: ex-lepers, evil trucks, and discussions of the worst things we've ever done.
Thanks for all your support, Commanders - enjoy this bonus episode!
Welcome to Los Angeles in 1976, setting for John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13, a tale of bad gangs, good guys, and a tragically mishandled ice cream order. This is America and Hollywood as we remember it growing up - a scary, magnetic clash of morals and modernity. And also lots of shooting.
Yes, this week we're watching John Carpenter's second film, where a criminal gang lays siege to a handful of survivors trapped inside an abandoned police station. Immaculate vibes, incredibl...
2025-10-13 05:00:25 +0000 UTC View PostThe 100th episode special is never late, it arrives precisely when it means to. In this case, as the 101st episode thanks to a building alarm that WOULD NOT STOP GOING OFF in a neighbouring unit.
All of which is to bury the lead - the lead being that we've finally watched Stanley Kubrick's classic of classics, 2001: A Space Odyssey. For a podcast built on a foundation of Star Trek movies, which began with a stilted attempt to capture the grandeur of Kubrick's film, this has been a lon...
Hello Redshirt crew!
As of yesterday we have embarked upon a new series on the pod, watching the films of John Carpenter from Dark Star (1974) to The Prince of Darkness (1987).
We love it when as many of you get to watch along as possible, so this time we're sharing where (in the UK) you can watch the movies we have coming up on the pod.
Dark Star - 6/10/25 - Included in Prime Video
Assault On Precinct 13 - 13/10/25 - Included in Prime Video
Bonus - The Fog - 15/...
A new dawn! A new day! A new Dark Star!
Welcome to a brand new series on Redshirt Cinema Club, as we embark upon a vaguely Halloween-timed viewing of the early films of John Carpenter.
There are so many reasons this run of films fits with what we've watched on the pod so far, not least the fact that several of these films are very good. We're starting this week with Carpenter's first film, Dark Star, co-created with eventual Alien writer Dan O'Bannon, and a teasing love letter to ...
2025-10-06 11:03:50 +0000 UTC View PostThe kids are awry
We've reached the finale of Alien: Earth! This week we discuss episode 8, 'The Real Monsters'.
The journey has ended, and have we been walking in a circle this whole time? The hybrid kids use soft(ware) power to launch a coup, we finally get to see that Morrow vs Kirsh showdown, the orchid escapes, and Johnny Eyeball finds a new home. Are we happy? Nearly. How are you doing?
2025-09-29 05:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostMorning all! A quick heads up from us - next week's 100th Episode Special on 2001: A Space Odyssey has been delayed by a week and will now arrive on Wednesday 8th October (which will mean it's actually the 101st episode, but everyone needs to ignore that).
We tried to record this morning, but arrived to find the fire alarm going off from a sensor in one of the restaurant units that neighbour our office. And it kept going off. For the whole time we were supposed to record.
Dave...
Hello lovely Redshirt listeners, Nath here. I hope you're all doing well, sitting or floating in zero G comfortably.
As we approach the end of our Alien: Earth series (an experiment in following along with a show being aired week by week, which the three of us have enjoyed) we've started to plan what we'll be up to for the rest of the year. This we can reveal in a few stages, each one slightly less detailed than the previous as we stretch into the future...
So first of all, we ...
This week - episode 7 of Alien: Earth, 'Emergence'.
Things are happening, Fletch - many of them bad, especially for any humans remaining on the Neverland island complex in possession of a moral compass. Slightly and Smee become body smugglers, Wendy and Nibs feel their humanity slipping away, and Morrow does an actual invasion. Oh, and the alien got out.
It's all a bit much for us, as our the first really significant cracks appear in our confidence that all these fabulous ideas ar...
2025-09-22 23:16:56 +0000 UTC View PostThis week's bonus episode has us climbing the walls here at Redshirt Cinema Club. Not in the idiomatic sense that we're feeling frustrated or anxious, but in the literal sense that we've altered our DNA through a teleportation accident and can now close our loft apartment windows without using a big stick.
All of which is to tortuously announce that we have watched David Cronenberg's 1986 body horror The Fly. Well, we say body horror, it's actually a mix of Cronenberg's schlock roots ...
Hello all - this is a heads up that tomorrow's bonus episode will be focused on David Cronenberg's '80s body horror, The Fly.
Why? WELL - it was Dave's idea, and it's one he might have had simply because last week's episode of Alien: Earth was also called 'The Fly'.
But it turned out to be an inspired thought. Cronenberg's film is an excellent fit with our journey on the pod so far. It was released in the same year as Aliens, and by the same studio. The Fly's marketing clearly...
After the brilliant episode 5 we return to Neverland for Alien: Earth episode 6 as events ramp up for the season finale.
Wendy is transfixed by a now-adolescent Xenomorph, Slightly is desperate for a human to get face-hugged and that sheep with an alien eye ball is definitely planning something.
Meanwhile Kirsh continues his observations while Boy Kavalier and Yutani enjoy an amicable business meeting. Does this episode live up to the standards of what came before? Let's find out!...
2025-09-15 08:44:11 +0000 UTC View PostEpisode 5 of Alien: Earth takes us back to the beginning. We wondered when we'd see the crew of the Maginot again and here they are, revealed in all their flawed, incompetent glory. An episode that details how we got from the first 10 minutes of episode 1 (everyone wakes up and banters over breakfast) to 20 minutes later in episode 1 (everyone dies).
It's classic Alien basically - a crew of increasingly panicked humans being picked off one-by-one, either by deadly extra-terrestrials or ...
2025-09-08 05:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostIs collecting physical media still a thing for the Redshirt crew? And if so, what does that look like? In this episode, we're taking a nostalgic stroll through our days of collecting movies - the what and the why - before crashing into the realities of our collections today.
In particular, we're taking a look at Rob's collection - and look! Pictures! These snaps are what the crew were looking at whilst recording this episode.
What are your collections like? And do you think th...
I'm looking through you...
It's time for episode four of Alien: Earth, 'Observations'. Which is apt because there's a lot of observing going on: Wendy in the lab, Boy Kavalier watching Joe, Dame Cynthia watching Nibs (...fly across the room), and the eyeball squid monster watching everyone at once, from inside a sheep.
We also observe that the show is turning out to be less interested in aliens and more interested in transhumanism - we can tell because it says so out loud, thro...
2025-09-01 09:49:55 +0000 UTC View PostCh ch ch ch chaaaaanges
It's time for episode three of Alien: Earth, and the title of the episode is 'Metamorphosis'. Which is a reference to our showgirl, of course, but also the Lost Boys, Morrow, and humanity itself in this show about making machines, becoming machines, putting children into machines ("this is fine" - the ethics board, distractedly), and sometimes thinking about machines when an alien comes along and tail-whips you into cutlets.
Turn and face the strange, ch...
Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold.
The mere anarchy loosed in this particular instance being a community poll to find the best genre movie made in the Marvel Era ("...before the dark times, before the Empire") in which we included options for actually properly good films alongside the 7/10 exploitation faves which this pod series was initially, kinda, sorta, about.
Anyway the final result was a tie between the well-known genre cinema stalwarts Interstellar and Arrival,...
In a recent bonus episode of the podcast we lamented the death of the video rental store and the subsequent cultural hole left in our movie-watching lives. The absence of that physical place, that curated library of excitement and colour. We’d make plans to go there. The Friday evening tradition of selecting a film and cradling it in the car as we travelled home via the Chinese takeaway.
I’ve been trying to recreate the movie night experience for my 9-year-old daughter recently. He...
This week we're beginning our series on Alien: Earth.
Having watched the Alien film series in its entirety at the end of last year, we are perfectly prepared, poised like an apex predator, and above all really bloody excited to embark upon a full, week-by-week viewing of the new FX series, Alien: Earth.
Alien: Earth has been created and overseen by Noah Hawley, the creator of TV shows Legion and Fargo, both of which are a careful mix of faithfulness and creativity - exactly the qu...
2025-08-18 07:04:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello Redshirt Cinema Club! Because our movie this week is the FANTASTIC Edge of Tomorrow, as a little bonus here's something Nath wrote about it for Edge magazine shortly after it came out, 1000 years ago, about the film's relationship with ...
2025-08-12 07:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post