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From ‘Last Jedi’ to ‘Solo’: 10 sci-fi shows for 2018

"Electric Dreams"
“Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams” comes to Amazon Video in January. (Amazon Video via YouTube)

The dust has barely settled on the premiere of “Star Wars, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.” Or is that a thin layer of salt? In any case, it’s already time to look forward to the science-fiction screen offerings in the months ahead, leading up to the next Star Wars story on Memorial Day weekend.

This personal top-10 list should get things started, with a couple of caveats. I’m not including the long list of next year’s Marvel and DC comic-book spinoffs, which adds “Game of Thrones” veteran Maisie Williams (Arya) to the marquee for “The New Mutants.” For that list, check ComicBook.com’s roundup.

I’m also not including a couple of favorites that are still lacking release dates for their 2018 seasons, such as “The Handmaid’s Tale” (on Hulu) and “The Expanse” (on Syfy).

With those preliminaries out of the way, here are 10 shows to put on your radar screen for the next five months.

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Archaeologists dissect the ‘Tomb of Christ’

Work in the Edicule
Workers move a marble slab to expose deeper layers in the Edicule within the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is revered as the site of Jesus’ tomb. (National Geographic via YouTube)

After more than 15 years of study, experts are laying out the evidence revealing how far back the history goes for the room-sized shrine in Jerusalem that’s revered as Jesus’ tomb.

Spoiler alert: There’s no “Jesus Was Here” graffiti on the walls.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the point of the research. Instead, archaeologists were taking advantage of a conservation effort at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, one of Christianity’s holiest sites, to look inside the shrine known as the Edicule (which is Latin for “little house”).

The results of their studies were reported today by National Geographic, which chronicled the project for a TV documentary titled “Secrets of Christ’s Tomb.”

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Get a double dose of ‘Year in Space’ lore

Scott Kelly
Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly recounts his “Year in Space” mission during an event at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in May 2016. (NASA Photo / Bill Ingalls)

Space fans are used to seeing double when they’re keeping track of twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly, but this week Seattleites can get a double helping of pure Scott.

Tonight, the U.S. record-holder for continuous time in orbit is the star of “Beyond a Year in Space,” a PBS documentary done in cooperation with Time magazine.

The hourlong TV show is a follow-up on an earlier program that aired just after the end of Scott Kelly’s 340-day stint on the International Space Station in March 2016. Part 2 delves into Kelly’s return in depth, including his painful readjustment to Earth’s gravitational pull. At first, even the weight of his clothes gave his skin a burning sensation.

“Gravity definitely gives you a beat-down when you get back,” he says on the show.

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‘Star Trek’ rates Elon Musk with Wright Brothers

'Star Trek: Discovery'
The starship Discovery’s captain, Gabriel Lorca (played by Jason Isaacs), lists Elon Musk among the pioneers of propulsion in a 23rd-century scene from “Star Trek: Discovery.” (CBS via All Access)

SpaceX founder Elon Musk hasn’t yet scored a cameo on the Star Trek stage, as fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos did last year, but he won a high-level shout-out on this week’s episode of “Star Trek: Discovery.”

Apparently, Musk will be held in as much esteem as the Wright Brothers and the builder of Earth’s first warp drive, Zefram Cochrane, by the year 2256.

That’s the time frame for “Star Trek: Discovery,” the latest manifestation of the 51-year-old space saga on CBS All Access, the TV network’s streaming video service.

Musk, who celebrated this year’s 14th successful launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rockettoday, gets name-checked during a key scene in the Oct. 8 episode, during which the captain of the starship Discovery tells the science officer that his careful study of space mushrooms would have to be put aside for a high-risk activation of an experimental “spore drive.”

“How do you want to be remembered in history?” Captain Gabriel Lorca asks. “Alongside the Wright Brothers, Elon Musk, Zefram Cochrane? Or as a failed fungus expert? A selfish little man who put the survival of his own ego before the lives of others?”

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Amazon adds Star Trek skills to Alexa’s repertoire

Jeff Bezos photoillustration

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said the Alexa voice-activated AI assistant was inspired by the talking computer on “Star Trek,” so it only makes sense that Alexa is saluting the latest incarnation of the Star Trek saga.

“Star Trek: Discovery” premieres Sept. 24 on CBS All Access, and in the show’s honor, Amazon has added a few tricks that Echo, Dot and other Alexa-enabled devices can show off.

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Bill Nye sues Disney for millions in TV dispute

Bill Nye the Science Guy, a veteran of tussles over climate change and evolution, has just sparked a legal battle over math – specifically, the millions of dollars he says Disney and its associated ventures owes him from airings of his TV show for kids.

If Nye succeeds with his lawsuit, which was filed on Aug. 24 in Los Angeles Superior Court, Seattle’s public television station, KCTS-TV, could benefit as well. KCTS is named as one of the participants in a partnership that was allegedly short-changed.

Nye says Disney’s Buena Vista Television and other subsidiaries provided incorrect accountings of how much was made from distributing his Emmy-winning show, titled “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” He also says Disney misapplied the formulas laid out in its contract to determine how big a share Nye, KCTS and other partners should have received.

The 28-page filing first came to light in a report by the Deadline website.

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Numbers tell tales on ‘Game of Thrones’

"Game of Thrones" title

“Game of Thrones,” the HBO sword-sorcery-and-sex series that begins its seventh season tonight, has spawned a geekier kind of game: doing data analytics to study who’s on top and who’ll get the ax (figuratively and literally).

The Wall Street Journal delved deeply into the data geekery last week, noting that fans have recorded the screen time and other statistics for nearly 200 notable characters over the course of the past 60 episodes. Intricate algorithms seek to correlate the characters’ characteristics with their chances of surviving the poison pens wielded by book author George R.R. Martin and the series’ screenwriters.

Indian data scientist Shail Deliwala ran the numbers and came up with several correlations. Some mesh with common sense (for example, characters with lots of dead relatives are less likely to survive), while others mesh more with literary sense (for example, the larger the attacking force, the higher the chances that the defenders will prevail).

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Lessons learned from Einstein’s ‘Genius’

Geoffrey Rush as Einstein
An elderly Albert Einstein, played by Geoffrey Rush, blows out a candle on a birthday cake in the final episode of National Geographic Channel’s “Genius” TV series. (National Geographic Channel Photo)

Don’t expect to hear a lot about relativity in the final chapter of Albert Einstein’s life story, as told tonight in the season finale of National Geographic Channel’s “Genius” TV series.

But do expect to see a lot about the humanitarian – and all-too-human – side of the 20th century’s best-known scientist.

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Einstein’s love life vs. his love of physics

'Genius' TV show
Albert Einstein and his wife, Mileva Maric (played by Johnny Flynn and Samantha Colley) look over a scientific paper in “Genius,” a TV series on the National Geographic Channel. (NGC via YouTube)

National Geographic Channel’s “Genius” TV series on Albert Einstein spends almost as much time on the famous physicist’s love life as it does on his theory of relativity – and his most recent biographer, Walter Isaacson, says that’s just as it should be.

“In my biography, I begin and end by saying there’s a ‘unified field theory’ that connects Einstein’s personality with his physics, and the genius of the TV series ‘Genius’ is that it shows this,” said Isaacson, who has written biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs as well as “Einstein: His Life and Universe.”

Isaacson said the series’ fourth episode, airing tonight, illustrates that point. It focuses on Einstein’s “miracle year” of 1905, when he laid out not just one but four groundbreaking scientific papers, including the theory of special relativity.

But it also dwells on Einstein’s tempestuous relationship with his first wife, Serbian-born physicist Mileva Maric, who helped him with his math.

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Five tips for future Mars explorers

Mars miniseries
The “Mankind to Mars” panel presentation incorporates video clips from National Geographic Channel’s “Mars” miniseries. (NGC / Imagine / RadicalMedia)

If you want to maximize your chances of weathering Mars’ harsh radiation environment, get in the habit of eating broccoli.

That’s a bit of far-out diet advice from Ray Arvidson, a veteran of robotic Red Planet missions going back to the Viking landers in the 1970s.

Arvidson, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, was among a trio of space experts holding forth at “National Geographic Live: Mankind to Mars,” a multimedia panel presentation hosted by the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall.

The traveling show is inspired by the National Geographic Channel’s hybrid docudrama TV series, “Mars,” which finished its first six-episode season last December and has gotten the green light for a second season.

Arvidson and his fellow panelists – “Night Sky Guy” commentator Andrew Fazekas and Vanderbilt astrophysicist Jedidah Isler – make liberal use of video clips and graphics from the TV show to make their points about the prospects for finding traces of life on Mars, and perhaps building settlements there.

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