Who among us doesn’t dream of space in their youth?

OK, maybe some of us. Like the ones with lives. While you were out playing hopscotch with little Jimmy and Susie, I was locked in my room mainlining episodes of Star Trek or the weird, sanitized version of Aliens that aired on broadcast TV. Fantastical science-fiction adventure seemed to offer more than playground games and actual human connection. Spaceships over relationships.

Star Trek, celebrating its 60th anniversary this month, offered a utopian vision of the future. Highly competent scientists traveling the galaxy solving moral and ethical quandaries with grace and intelligence. It was a vision of Earth that had overcome greed and selfishness to pursue a more peaceful world Kirk and Spock. Picard and Data. These were characters that were ethical, witty and heroic. Better that than little Jimmy burning ants with a magnifying glass.

The Alien franchise, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. In the second film, Aliens, which coincidentally is turning 40 this year, the characters are mostly brain-dead killing-machine soldiers and venal corporate stooges. This one sounds a bit more familiar, doesn’t it? The entire known universe is controlled by a diabolical company whose only aim is profit at the expense of the average person. Both Star Trek and the Alien films offered the requisite thrills and whiz-bang action to titillate a young boy like myself back in the 1990s, but they were also diametrically opposed visions of what the world might look like when I became an adult. Would it be along the lines of a........

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