In this episode, we discuss John Carpenter’s student film, later expanded for theatrical release, Dark Star. It’s a low budget science fiction dark comedy in which a burned-out crew flies from planet to planet, destroying any that they deem “unstable.” Carpenter made Dark Star as the anti-2001, anti-Star Trek. Dark Star was a collaboration between him and Dan O’Bannon, who later wrote the script for Alien, as well as other familiar geek films. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of popular culture.