Robin Curtis Movies

This episode is a delightfully calculated slam at Murder, She Wrote's Thursday-night competition Friends. Visiting the set of the popular twentysomething sitcom "Buds", Jessica (Angela Lansbury) quickly realizes that there is plenty of disharmony amongst the young and attractive cast members. Making matters worse, the series' avaricious producer is planning to hype the ratings by killing off one of the characters--in the script, that is. Before long, however, life imitates art, and Jessica sets her mind to exposing a murderer. The real fun in this episode derives from guessing which of the "Buds" characters is supposed to be Rachel, Ross, Phoebe, Chandler etc. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This science fiction yarn from Richard Pepin and Joseph Merhi revolves around the crash-landing of a space shuttle bearing six astronauts who are returning from a top-secret mission. Mission commander Cutter (Lance Le Gault) puts Capt. Nick Saxon (Jack Scalia) on the case. Saxon was the head of the last Aquarius mission, which also failed, and his wife, Debbie (Donna W. Scott), is one of the crewmembers this time around. The crew has been infected with something very strange, evidenced when the astronauts break out of the shuttle and their leader, Joe (Jonathan Banks), punches his fist clean through a guard's chest. After his eyes turn a mysteriously cattish yellow he tells his former best-buddy Nick, "It doesn't matter! None of your pathetic little lives matter anymore!" and throws him from a speeding truck before beating a hasty retreat with his super-human crew. The truth of the matter is that the astronauts are being controlled by space parasites that need to find their egg canisters to hatch a race of monsters and destroy the world. Debbie, the sole exception, is being controlled by a female "watcher" named Sabidra, who explains that her people are actually a "race with their faces to the sun" and that she will destroy the Dark Breed. There's also a government conspiracy, involving Cutter, who orders everyone "terminated with extreme prejudice." Numerous highly flammable items get blown up with bazookas and Joe morphs naked into a big slimy monster before Nick blows everything up and gets to run in slow motion ahead of a big fireball. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Amidst protests from all corners of the universe, Cmdr. Sinclair is ordered to protect Dilgar war criminal Jha'Dur (Sarah Douglas). Notorious for performing experiments on helpless alien prisoners, Jha'Dur claims to have developed an immortality serum. But she may never get the opportunity to use it: Narn envoy Na'Toth has sworn to kill Jha'Dur, orders or no orders. "Deathwalker" made its American TV bow on April 20, 1994; the episode was written by Lawrence G. DiTillio. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the first part of this episode, a captive Riker learned to his horror that Picard had joined a band of mercenaries who looted galactic archeology sites and sold their ill-gotten gains to the highest bidder. By the time part two rolled around, both Riker and the audience had been assured that Picard was merely posing as an outlaw to prevent the villains from getting their hands on a dangerous Vulcan artifact. Likewise pretending to cast his lot with the looters, Riker assists Picard in his efforts, which may well result in death for both men. Written by Ronald D. Moore from a story by Naren Shankar, part two of "Gambit" originally aired October 23, 1993. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A departmental intelligence test reveals that court bailiff Bull (Richard Moll) is at a "genius" level, with an I.Q. of 181! Duly impressed by himself, Bull accepts a job with a scientific think tank, where his responsibilities include contemplating the mysteries of life (from how gravity works to why men have nipples) and telepathic communication with lab animals. What he doesn't know is that his female colleague Dr. Judith Malloy (Robin Curtis) has something on her mind other than Bull's intellect. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) concludes the story arc begun with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and continued in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), but on a wholly new, different, and upbeat note. As the movie opens, months have elapsed since the events in Star Trek III; Admiral Kirk (William Shatner), McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Scott (James Doohan), Sulu (George Takei), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), and Chekhov (Walter Koenig) are marooned in self-imposed exile on Vulcan, along with the resurrected and regenerated Spock (Leonard Nimoy, who also directed). While Spock tries to sort out the Vulcan and human halves of his resurrected psyche, the others prepare to return to Earth to face a brace of charges by the Klingon Empire and Star Fleet over events on Genesis. Taking off in their commandeered, jerry-rigged Klingon ship, they head to Earth, not knowing that a new crisis could destroy their home world -- a huge, immensely powerful alien probe has entered the galaxy and established a position near Earth, disabling every vehicle and installation in its path with its energy and communication output, and has ionized the entire atmosphere and started vaporizing the oceans, leaving the planet only hours to survive.

Spock determines that the probe is sending out signals to another intelligent terrestrial life form, humpbacked whales, which no longer exist. Using the gravity slingshot time-warp effect (established early in the original series) to travel back into Earth's 20th century, Kirk and company land in 1980s San Francisco to try and bring humpbacked whales to the 23rd century, to respond to the probe. Thus starts a surprisingly breezy, light-hearted, yet serious odyssey through the past (comparable to the best work of the original series), as the crew learns to deal with exact-change buses, angry drivers, punk-rock enthusiasts and other elements of '80s life, and Kirk tries to persuade a scientist (Catherine Hicks) of his good intentions for two whales in captivity. The screenplay, co-authored by Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Nicholas Meyer, and Harve Bennett (from a story by Nimoy and Bennett), is the cleverest and most sophisticated of all the Star Trek movie screenplays, recalling some of the elements of Meyer's earlier time-travel movie Time After Time and also anticipating the feel and tone of the series Star Trek: The Next Generation (which would be on the air not quite a year later). Nimoy's direction offers a combination of brisk pacing and a deep love of the characters and the actors, as well as a serious appreciation of the humorous aspects of the script, and Shatner gives his best performance of any of the movies. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The First Affair of the title is the one conducted by naïve but nubile college freshman Toby King (Melissa Sue Anderson). Struck by the girl's sense of responsibility, professor Jane Simon (Loretta Swit) hires Toby as a baby-sitter. Soon afterwards, however, Jane's susceptible husband Greg (Joel Higgins) finds himself being won over by Toby's unspoiled beauty and words of endearment. This standard-issue triangle drama was filmed under the title Freshman Year. Lensed on location at Harvard University, the made-for-TV First Affair premiered October 25, 1983. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This 1981 John Irvin picture constitutes an adaptation of Peter Straub's colossal, bestselling novel. The central plot -- shared by both book and film -- revolves around the four elderly members of the Chowder Society (Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and John Houseman), who gather in each other's drawing rooms each winter to sip cognac and spin elaborate ghost stories. The four men also share a dark secret far more unsettling than fiction -- a secret which has literally come back to haunt them, as well as their own adult offspring. Each man is visited by a hideous specter bearing the likeness of a young woman (Alice Krige) they accidentally killed 50 years ago when spurning her mischievous sexual advances. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide