Star Trek: The Motion Picture turned 40 years old this year. Perhaps one of the least-loved, yet utterly successful films that spawned multiple sequels in the last few decades, The Motion Picture is a bit of conundrum. While it is rooted in the same universe as shows and movies that came before and after it, it has a markedly different look and feel than much of the rest of the Star Trek canon. This makes it something of an odd man out. At the same time, it’s a movie that tried to express a number of character and plot ideas that were used again with much more success in other adventures in the Star Trek universe.

For horror fans everywhere Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut is without a doubt one of the most highly-anticipated home video releases of not just 2014 but possibly all time. Clive Barker‘s horror-fantasy cult classic has traveled one of the roughest roads imaginable from the writer-director’s initial conceptions of the story, to its troubled production and theatrical release, and lastly to the audience that discovered on video what had been ignored at the box office.

The fan-created “Cabal Cut” of Nightbreed that first began being assembled over five years ago sought to restore Barker’s film to its intended epic form, and toured horror and comic conventions all over the world to great success in the hope that one day it would receive an official release. Check out this article that I wrote back in April 2012 for further background into Nightbreed‘s post-production foibles and the history of the “Cabal Cut.”

Finally Shout! Factory picked up the rights to release the extended Nightbreed on Blu-ray and DVD this year. Despite being pushed back several months from its original projected summer debut in order to allow more time for a proper restoration of the longer director’s cut, Scream Factory revived interest in the long-awaited Blu-ray via an announcement today offering tons of information. Read all the info below.

George Lucas’s first Star Wars opened in theaters in 1977. Since then five more episodes in the film franchise have debuted, a couple animated series have aired – more are on their way – and more merchandise than anyone can count have been sold. Now with the massive franchise belonging to Walt Disney Studios, who knows where Star Wars could go. We’ll be getting a new episode of the franchise in 2015, which will be followed by two more episodes and spinoff titles.

But if you have ever wondered what the marketing for the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, was like before the age of social media and the internet was like, then a video released by the official Star Wars YouTube channel can offer you a look. The original Empire Strikes Back teaser doesn’t even have any clips from the film, but it does have a bunch of images of concept art drawn by Ralph McQuarrie, and early stills of Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and other cast members preparing for the highly anticipated sequel. Best part of this teaser, there are no spoilers – you’ll see what I mean when you watch this trailer.

The seventh episode of The Geeks Of Doom Round Up is here, and Andy takes a look at the trailer for Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope, a documentary by Morgan Spurlock, which focuses on the annual San Diego Comic-Con. For our music selection this week, Greg remembers Ronnie Montrose from Montrose and Gamma who passed away this weekend, and in tribute plays “Space Station #5”

Later, we also pay tribute to more of our heroes who passed away this week. Ralph McQuarrie, legendary concept artist whose visions helped determine the look and feel of the Original Star Wars Trilogy, died this weekend – a heavy loss to fans everywhere. Davy Jones of The Monkees also passed away, and we close out the show with a tribute to him.

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Ralph McQuarrie, famous for his concept art and paintings for the original Star Wars trilogy, died today, March 3, 2012. He was 82.

McQuarrie’s official web site posted the message of his passing today, but no cause of death was given, although he had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease. You can read the full message here below.

Along with his Star Wars art, McQuarrie also worked on the original Battlestar Galactica television series, as well as the movies E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Of all his amazing art and illustrations, it was his concept work on 1985’s Cocoon that won him the Academy Award for Visual Effects.