Dispatch Ajax! Podcast

Max Headroom - a glitchy cyberpunk face that seemed like a novelty in the 1980s - somehow became a pop culture anchor through commercials, parodies, and wall-to-wall brand exposure. If you mostly remember New Coke or a weird talking head you saw on TV, you’re not alone and that’s part of the story.

We step away from our sci-fi channel mini-series for Pride Month to give slash fiction the spotlight it deserves, because it is not just “spicy fanfic.” It is a long-running tradition of readers and viewers naming queer subtext, building community around it, and creating stories where mainstream media stays silent.

In a break from our mini-series we’re taking a hard look at why UFO disclosure and UAP transparency keep feeling “right around the corner” while delivering almost nothing on which people can agree. Along the way we touch the viral political chatter, the shifting tone from outright denial to careful acknowledgment, and the way the internet turns every half-statement into proof of a hidden program.

In one of the last episodes of the series we take a hard look at Voyagers!, the 1982 time travel series that barrels from setup to action in seconds. If you’ve ever loved Quantum Leap, Doctor Who, Back to the Future style causality, or TVA style “sacred timeline” drama, this one is a missing link worth revisiting.

We’re continuing our Sci-Fi Channel origin series by digging into LEXX: a cult space opera about a cowardly non-hero, an undead assassin, a love-obsessed robot head, and a former love slave flying a living ship built to destroy planets. It’s silly, dark, occasionally bad, sometimes brilliant, and almost never safe.

 In our ongoing series we’re tracing Jerry Anderson’s strange, essential legacy and why early Sci Fi Channel programming kept looping Supercar, Stingray, and Space: 1999 into the brains of American kids who had no idea what they were watching, only that it felt like a secret door into another era of science fiction TV.

This is a preview of our ongoing series on the origins and programming of the Sci-Fi Channel. I promise we do actually talk about Gerry Anderson in this one. 

William Shatner's TekWar is a so-so cyberpunk cop story that somehow grew into novels, comics, trading cards, syndicated TV movies, a USA Network and Sci Fi Channel series, and a PC video game that many people still call one of the worst ever made. The real story is not the plot, it’s the momentum. We follow the money, the branding, and the era’s obsession with recognizable names to figure ou...

A superhero team that rides in an ice cream truck?  Courtney Cox?? The Predator??? sounds like a joke until you actually watch it. We go deep on Misfits of Science, the short-lived 1985 NBC sci-fi superhero series that later found a second life on early Sci-Fi Channel lineups and then quietly vanished, shrouded in tragedy.

Gul Dukat ruled Terok Nor with an iron fist, measuring Bajorans like inventory even as the occupation began to crack under resistance and political pressure. We unpack how fear of assassination, obsession with control, and a need to be admired can fuse into something far more dangerous than simple rage.

We start with the big thesis: the Sci-Fi Channel is an early masterclass in niche marketing, built on the belief that sci-fi fans are loyal and underserved. From there we dig into the credibility play of bringing in Gene Roddenberry and Isaac Asimov, and how the network’s direction shifts once the people with real “skin in the game” are gone. We also revisit the weirdest, most charming early exper...

In our classic third installment of the Highlander franchise (because of the reported first footage of the remake premiering) we really have a blast talking about all the other fun stuff we'd been waiting to cover.  Believe it or not, Highlander is supposed to be simple: immortals fight, heads come off, lightning happens. Then the sequels show up and the canon turns into a sword fight with it...

This is part 2 of our revisitation of the Highlander franchise - since the official footage of the Highlander reboot recently debuted at CinemaCon.

The Highlander remake is officially moving from rumor to reality, which means it’s time to revisit the series on one of our earliest explainers. We go deep on the franchise’s core mythology of immortals who can’t die unless they’re beheaded, who are pulled toward the Gathering, and who chase the mysterious Prize even when the canon can’t decide what the Prize really is. If you’ve ever argued about...

We're Back! And with that we start a new mini series about The Sci-Fi Channel (SyFy, if ya nasty) and its wild diaspora.  Something strange happened on old-school satellite TV: a channel appeared out of nowhere, looping wormholes and bright “screensaver” tunnels with no station ID, no ads, and no explanation. Then it teased an invasion and started a countdown clock. That mystery wasn’t pirate...

Rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated! We're still going, just having some hiccups, kinda like the rest of the world.  

We open the door to the underexplained corners of Nerd and Geek culture—where a driveway TARDIS keeps you warm at the bus stop, Flash Gordon becomes a friendship hinge, and debates about whether Star Wars is science fiction or fantasy spark better ways to watch everything else. This is a brief note from Podfest in Orlando earlier this year. 

We celebrate our 159th with - among many Geeky things - a fast, funny tour of Star Trek’s dangling threads, from Tasha Yar’s exit to the lost “Conspiracy” arc, plus DS9’s long-game brilliance and Voyager’s resets. We field listener questions on Avengers, The Question, X-Men deep cuts, and stage a Borg Cube vs Death Star face-off. Plus, Data and the Force?

...It's Erich Von Däniken. In the 1960's a Swiss hotelier wrote a book that changed how millions see the past—and how pop culture tells stories about it. We revisit the wild trajectory of Chariots of the Gods , the “ancient aliens” hypothesis it popularized, and the uncomfortable roots that made its rise possible. Then we pull the camera back: how the Space Age, New Age mysticism, and a...

RIP Gil Gerard. A New York cab, a day job in drama class, and a shot at the 25th century: that’s the unlikely runway that launched Gil Gerard into Buck Rogers, and it still glows with neon charm. We open the vault on Gerard’s early grind through commercials, soaps, and 70s disaster flicks, then follow the thread back to Buck’s pulp origins in newspapers, radio waves, and the 1939 serials that taug...

536 CE: What happens when the sun dims for eighteen months and summer never really arrives? The volcanic winter that blanketed much of the world in a cold, bluish haze, and the chain reaction it set off—failed harvests, famine, migrations, plagues, and the quiet rewiring of global power. Drawing on eyewitness chronicles and modern climate forensics like ice-core sulfate spikes and tree-ring anomal...

Cult Classic status doesn’t happen by accident—it’s engineered by obsession, scarcity, and a helluva lot of Weird. We set out to map that journey and name the films from the last decade that might evolve from overlooked curiosities into midnight fixtures, using clear criteria: underseen on release, minimal awards heat, fervent fan energy, and a distinct voice that invites rewatching and debate. If...

We trace how films become cult classics, from midnight screenings and VHS trades to streaming silos and algorithm feeds. We pull apart cult vs underground vs underseen, weigh the death of monoculture, and map how community keeps the weird and beloved alive. Along the way, we separate “cult” from its lookalikes: underground (how a movie is made), underseen (how many people found it), and the elusiv...

Parties fall apart when they rely on luck. We turn the chaos of a live office bash into a step‑by‑step blueprint for a New Year celebration that feels immersive, welcoming, and unmistakably geeky. From the moment guests walk in, we want the room to communicate: you belong here, you’re taken care of, and you’re about to have fun. We start with atmosphere, the most underrated tool a host has. Think...

A glowing red nose didn’t start as folklore—it started as copy. We follow Rudolph’s unlikely path from a 1939 Montgomery Ward booklet written by Robert L. May, forged in grief and grit, to Johnny Marks’ earworm melody and Gene Autry’s reluctant hit that stormed both pop and country charts. Then we pull the curtain on the Rankin/Bass special: GE’s sponsorship, Arthur Rankin’s partnership with stop‑...