Though I remain firmly in support of this line's approach (diorama base, limited articulation, dynamic poses, interchangeable parts) and its first two figures, I can't say I'm going to run out and grab this one. Not because it's a less key scene - Picard isn't the man of action Kirk was. No, I just have an issue with the way Max Headroom's prosthetic jawline and nose appear to have been glued on to Patrick Stewart's face.

He looks like a cross between Stewart and the bad guy from The Rocketeer:

I hope it's not the final sculpt. In other toy news, one of the things that came back from the focus group survey was that more toy coverage would be good - I wonder if I might solicit the readership's help for a name to use with toy spotlight/review pieces, along the "Fanboy Flick Pick" lines. At my last employer's I used the title "Figures & Speech," and could probably use it again if I pushed, but would rather make a clean break. Was thinking "Plastic Prison Break," since collectors who open toys often speak of freeing them from plastic prisons, but am open to any other ideas.

UPDATE: Trek Select figures have interchangeable parts with each other!

Okay, so we learn a few more tidbits from this: the perception of Coulson's death is acknowledged, and it would seem the information that he is a live is classified "level 7" (seven, of course, is the number of movies in Marvel's "Phase One"...plus one!). Kids in this world play with superhero toys too. And there is a black superhero, probably in the pilot, though we don't know his name yet (insert Chris Rock "Nat X" joke about how a full movie would give The Man a heart attack). In fact, it looks like several super-powered or scientifically augmented individuals will be showing up. Aliens, too.

We also learn that I'm tired of putting all the periods into the titular acronym. So I'm just gonna write it as an all-caps word. Really, it'll be easier on everyone, but mostly me.

Here's an action figure that doesn't exist in the Marvel Universe yet, but will soon in ours - Hot Toys' Agent Coulson:

Watch the trailer after the jump. It works best if you pull down your sunglasses just like our plastic Phil above...

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For nearly as long as Star Trek has existed, so have comics based upon the final frontier's favorite franchise. The first ones were released by Gold Key in 1967-- one year after the series debuted - and they continue to this day through IDW's various Trek-inspired releases. Regardless of what you think about the actual quality of these things, it's difficult to ignore the fact that they helped keep Trek alive during those lean years after the show's original cancellation and before its cinematic revival in 1979. It's also hard to be overly critical about the Gold Key and Marvel runs because they possess a charm and innocence that elevates them above most published tie-ins. The subsequent comics (which explored not only the original series but The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, as well as Early Voyages and Starfleet Academy-branded titles) nobly attempted to further expand the scope of Gene Roddenberry's original vision on the printed page. Although the results were mixed many of these are bona-fide classics.

In one form or another, Star Trek comics have been available for nearly 46 years. So with Star Trek Into Darkness hitting theaters this week, it seemed like a perfect time to celebrate them in typical Topless Robot fashion by mocking their often melodramatic covers. That said, today's Daily List presents 15 comics handpicked from the various Trek runs whose covers are a juggling act of insanity, awesomeness and silliness. Set phasers on, well, snark I guess. Here we (boldy) go.

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Jeebus. When I posted that Kylie Minogue thing, I had no idea how close to the truth it actually was.

This one is real. And it's not fantastic.

h/t Eric Diaz

My inner or maybe not-so-inner) nit-picker wants to scream at this video: "She-Ra fights Hordak, not Skeletor!"

Then I calm down and realize it's a riff on the Wonder Woman pilot that never aired, and how badly TV tends to ignore canon, and I take a breath.

Still...would it not have been funnier with Hordak?

Watch after the jump and you tell me.

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"Futurist, filmmaker, ecstatic truth lover, techno optimist, infinity in all directions." That's how Jason Silva describes himself on Twitter. And while he has a highly eclectic career as a filmmaker, journalist, producer and public speaker, he is undoubtedly best known as the host of National Geographic's Brain Games, a show all about classic brain teasers and why your mind responds to them in the way that it does. You may think when you're watching the show that you're getting a Penn and Teller-style lesson in how magic is performed, but the not-so-stealthy agenda of the show is to subtly give the viewer a crash course in the basics of neuroscience, without being boring or jargon-heavy.

Silva's always happy to talk about the brain, so I decided to pick his. It was fun.

Luke Y. Thompson: Tell me about how your interest in brain tricks came about.

Jason Silva: Brain Games is pop science theories, and we use these perceptual illusions and interactive experiments to kind of "hack" your brain, essentially. And in doing so, reveal the shortcomings - the limitations inherent in the brain, and it's fascinating! On the one hand, the brain is the most complicated object in the universe, yet it's surprisingly easy to hack. We think that's a very fun, viscerally way of getting people interested in learning about the brain. We get to teach people neuroscience through these games, and then of course we explain them.

NatGeo got me on board because I was producing a series of short documentaries on the web that explore the role of technology as a means to extend the boundaries of the human brain. I call myself a technical optimist; I'm a big fan of Ray Kurzweil, the futurist, as well as Kevin Kelly, who thought about technology as the seventh kingdom of life, technology as an extension of the human brain, an extension of the human mind. And my videos had gone viral, so I speak a lot at keynotes around the world. I spoke with TED - basically, I was getting some traction for these docs, and NatGeo thought "this guy would have a kind of passion and voice to bring to Brain Games," which they were turning into a full series. They brought me on board, and I got to host the show, and it's been a blast! We had the highest rated new series launch in NatGeo's history.

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Some of you are already discussing Doctor Who in the weekend thread - I liked the Dave McKean-style inside-the-head bits, even if Locutus of Gallifrey seemed a tad familiar.

The Simpsons did a Robot Chicken couch gag full of enough toy-collecting references to choke a scalper. I can't find the actual gag online, but here's part one of a making-of series:

And the best SNL skit of a bad bunch - the inevitable Disneyfication of J-horror. A few years too late to be really groundbreaking (J-horror is probably being badly joked about by Michael Ian Black and Chris Jericho on some VH-1 "I love the oughts" special as we speak), but it still made me laugh.

Your space to discuss these, Game of Thrones and everything else begins below.

To nobody's surprise this will air on ABC.

Talk amongst yourselves about it or anything else.

When last we checked on on the bombastic former leader of the Hawkmen and the Gungans, he was bellowing about baboon buttocks for the benefit of children learning classical music. In his latest bit of insanity, we find that him sending sea monkeys to celebrities, firing off automatic weapons at the slightest provocation, yelling about being Caesar Augustus and - strangest of all - speaking in a normal volume at times, even impersonating other people and doing different accents.

His name is so fitting, because we are truly blessed to have this guy exist.

Video after the jump.

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8-bit poster by Jesse Eisemann. Movie release date not final!

It can be a challenge to review something that so many people don't want to know anything about before they go in - save whether it's good or not. I'm not one who believes in giving away major revelations, and plan in the body of the review to dance around the big surprises as deftly as possible. For those who wish to be maximally protected, however, here's all you need to hear:

Star Trek Into Darkness is the most visually spectacular film in the franchise, thanks both to Imax 3D and Scott Chambliss' intricate production design, which brings us the most elaborate future Earth to date, another alien planet best left unnamed for now and lots of great space-debris fields. Narratively, however, it's more problematic - for a film series that attempted to so "boldly go" in a new direction last time around, its incessant references and cribs from predecessors are a disappointment, making many aspects of the tale all-too-sadly predictable.

I still liked it overall, but it has issues I cannot overlook.

Want to know more? I promise not to be too spoilery, but even hints of things may clue the savvy Trekker in. Click onward if you're sure...

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