h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is an article I am very glad to have discovered! The phenomenon of the British-accented villain in Hollywood has always upset me, and my English father (when he was alive) - we live in New Zealand. The English accented villain gets to its most ridiculous on TV - most notable an episode of Cattlecar Galaxtative (Battlestar etc) - where boys who were working against Apollo and Starbuck attained fruitier and more stereotyped English accents the more they disagreed with the American Heroes! At the end of the episode, when the boys had rescued their father and admitted that A & S had been right all along, they sat around the campfire with their silent sisters (housekeepers for the boys) and re-adopted American accents with what seemed like great relief!
Another interesting point, especially now, is the Reel Bad Arab stereotype. I recommend the book 'Reel Bad Arabs' by Jack Shaheen, for a discussion of it.

I'm glad that I've never been exposed much to that TV show. (I like your name for it. I'd always referred to it as Battlescar Ballistica.) Still, there are also American shows where the Englander is the awfully good guy, though the TV show itself might still reek. (I guess I'm thinking of Mr. French in "Family Affair" and Batman's butler, Alfred. Sorry that they both happen to be manservants. I seem to remember an American Western starring a British chap as the hero, but memory fails. Oh! There was the partner to the Girl from Uncle.)

Still, if you'll do me the favor, read my little note on sensitivity. It may make you feel a bit better.

Cattlecar etc., was on TV here in the 1980s, and I didn't have TV, so didn't see it... but I was in an sf fan club where it was called Cattlecar... Then, we got to see it all over again, in about 1999 or 2000. (*Everything* sf has to be watched, even if only once, that's the rule in our family.)
Funnily, I *seem* to remember that Western, but only very vaguely. I love Westerns too, or did when I was 14.

That is one interesting family rule. Ever see "Alien from L.A."?

No, I don't know that one, sadly...
We've seen some marvellous stuff: Ultraviolet, The Visitor (with John Corbett and Steve Railsback) and some absolute offal!

Don't remember 'Ultraviolet' though I believe I've seen 'Visitor'. Is that the Steve Railsback movie where he kisses Sean Connery? The one with the alien vampire race?

Alien from L.A. could be considered offal, I suppose. I preferred to think of it as a sci-fi romp. It starred Kathy Ireland, the supermodel as a bespeckled, whiny-voiced, socially repressed, beach-goer who comes of age while searching for her explorer father, who has been presumed dead.

Come to think of it, it has a vaguely similar plot to 'The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak' which starred Tawny Kitaen, except that Kathy's father was in the underground remains of a spaceship/city called Atlantis.

I don't remember Steve Railsback kissing Sean Connery! (But I'd pay to see that...) The Visitor stars John Corbett as a New Age-y alien, or rather a human abducted ca 1947 and then returned in the 1990s, to save Earth from the Judgement of the Aliens. Steve Railsback is a mad NSA guy, whose brother was abducted in the 1970s, right before his (Railsback's) eyes, and he went mad, especially as his brother was never returned (that he knows of.) Brilliant!

Sounds pretty sharp. The one I had been thinking of turns out to have been "Lifeforce". I'm afraid that I may have been mistaken about Sean being the one what got friendly with Steve.

The movie is about alien vampires that drew lifeforce from victims who became dried out husks, only to reanimate some hours later with the same hunger as their attackers.

The main vampire character was a doll, who could connect to Steve while controlling other bodies. In his mind, Steve kept seeing her while the older guy was caring for Steve's injuries. Kind of a mind invasion sort of thing.

It was actually done well enough that it didn't seem funny at the time, just a bit unsettling. The movie was okay, and the doll was a real doll.