"Actor: Wil Wheaton"

• Stand By Me | DVD | (04/12/2000) from £5.65   |  Saving you £7.34 (129.91%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A sleeper hit when released in 1986, Stand by Me is based on Stephen King's novella "The Body" (from the book Different Seasons); but it's more about the joys and pains of boyhood friendship than a morbid fascination with corpses. It's about four boys ages 12 and 13 (Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell) who take an overnight hike through the woods near their Oregon town to find the body of a boy who's been missing for days. Their journey includes a variety of scary adventures (including a ferocious junkyard dog, a swamp full of leeches and a treacherous leap from a train trestle), but it's also a time for personal revelations, quiet interludes and the raucous comradeship of best friends. Set in the 1950s, the movie indulges an overabundance of anachronistic profanity and a kind of idealistic, golden-toned nostalgia (it's told in flashback as a story written by Wheaton's character as an adult, played by Richard Dreyfuss). But it's delightfully entertaining from start to finish, thanks to the rapport among its young cast members and the timeless, universal themes of friendship, family and the building of character and self-esteem. Kiefer Sutherland makes a memorable teenage villain and look closely for John Cusack in a flashback scene as Wheaton's now-deceased and dearly missed brother. A genuine crowd-pleaser, this heartfelt movie led director Rob Reiner to even greater success with his next film, The Princess Bride. --Jeff Shannon

• Flubber | DVD | (05/02/2001) from £5.70   |  Saving you £12.29 (215.61%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Wacky Professor Philip Brainard (Robin Williams) has just invented a revolutionary new compound. Its green it flies and it looks like rubber. Its Flubber! And it has the ability to save his financially troubled college as well as his broken engagement to his girlfriend Sara. That is until the gooey substance is stolen right from under the nose of his beloved but jealous robot assistant Weebo! Now the professor's got to get the goo and the girl back where they belong. Mix one

• Star Trek: The Next Generation - Complete Seasons 1-7 | Blu Ray | (15/12/2014) from £91.98   |  Saving you £-25.20 (N/A%)   |  RRP £64.79

  After Star Wars and the successful big-screen Star Trek adventures, it's perhaps not so surprising that Gene Roddenberry managed to convince purse string-wielding studio heads in the 1980s that a Next Generation would be both possible and profitable. But the political climate had changed considerably since the 1960s, the Cold War had wound down, and we were now living in the Age of Greed. To be successful a second time, Star Trek had to change too. A writer's guide was composed with which to sell and define where the Trek universe was in the 24th Century. The United Federation of Planets was a more appealing ideology to an America keen to see where the Reagan/Gorbachev faceoff was taking them. Starfleet's meritocratic philosophy had always embraced all races and species. Now Earth's utopian history, featuring the abolishment of poverty, was brandished prominently and proudly. The new Enterprise, NCC 1701-D, was no longer a ship of war but an exploration vessel carrying families. The ethical and ethnical flagship also carried a former enemy (the Klingon Worf, played by Michael Dorn), and its Chief Engineer (Geordi LaForge) was blind and black. From every politically correct viewpoint, Paramount executives thought the future looked just swell! Roddenberry's feminism now contrasted a pilot episode featuring ship's Counsellor Troi (Marina Sirtis) in a mini-skirt with her ongoing inner strengths and also those of Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) and the short-lived Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby). The arrival of Whoopi Goldberg in season 2 as mystic barkeep Guinan is a great example of the good the original Trek did for racial groups--Goldberg has stated that she was inspired to become an actress in large part through seeing Nichelle Nichols' Uhura. Her credibility as an actress helped enormously alongside the strong central performances of Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard), Jonathan Frakes (First Officer Will Riker), and Brent Spiner (Data) in defining another wholly believable environment once again populated with well-defined characters. Star Trek, it turned out, did not depend for its success on any single group of actors. Like its predecessor in the 1960s, TNG pioneered visual effects on TV, making it an increasingly jaw-dropping show to look at. And thanks also to the enduring success of the original show, phasers, tricorders, communicators and even phase inverters were already familiar to most viewers. But while technology was a useful tool in most crises, it now frequently seemed to be the cause of them too, as the show's writers continually warned about the dangers of over-reliance on technology (the Borg were the ultimate expression of this maxim). The word "technobabble" came to describe a weakness in many TNG scripts, which sacrificed the social and political allegories of the original and relied instead upon invented technological faults and their equally fictitious resolutions to provide drama within the Enterprise's self-contained society. (The holodeck's safety protocol override seemed to be next to the light switch given the number of times crew members were trapped within.) This emphasis on scientific jargon appealed strongly to an audience who were growing up for the first time in the late 1980s with the home computer--and gave rise to the clichéd image of the nerdy Trek fan. Like in the original Trek, it was in the stories themselves that much of the show's success is to be found. That pesky Prime Directive kept moral dilemmas afloat ("Justice"/"Who Watches the Watchers?"/"First Contact"). More "what if" scenarios came out of time-travel episodes ("Cause and Effect"/"Time's Arrow"/"Yesterday's Enterprise"). And there were some episodes that touched on the political world, such as "The Arsenal of Freedom" questioning the supply of arms, "Chain of Command" decrying the torture of political prisoners and "The Defector", which was called "The Cuban Missile Crisis of The Neutral Zone" by its writer. The show ran for more than twice as many episodes as its progenitor and therefore had more time to explore wider ranging issues. But the choice of issues illustrates the change in the social climate that had occurred with the passing of a couple of decades. "Angel One" covered sexism; "The Outcast" was about homosexuality; "Symbiosis"--drug addiction; "The High Ground"--terrorism; "Ethics"--euthanasia; "Darmok"--language barriers; and "Journey's End"--displacement of Indians from their homeland. It would have been unthinkable for the original series to have tackled most of these. TNG could so easily have been a failure, but it wasn't. It survived a writer's strike in its second year, the tragic death of Roddenberry just after Trek's 25th anniversary in 1991, and plenty of competition from would-be rival franchises. Yes, its maintenance of an optimistic future was appealing, but the strong stories and readily identifiable characters ensured the viewers' continuing loyalty. --Paul Tonks

• Star Trek Next Generation Series 4 | DVD | (22/05/2006) from £17.98   |  Saving you £19.00 (118.82%)   |  RRP £34.99

  ""Space... The final frontier... These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: To explore strange new worlds... To seek out new life; new civilisations... To boldly go where no one has gone before!"" - Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) The complete fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation one of the finest sci-fi shows of all-time. Episodes Comprise: 1. The Best Of Both Worlds (Part 2) 2. Family 3. Brothers 4. Suddenly Human

• Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 1 | DVD | (01/04/2002) from £24.99   |  Saving you £60.00 (240.10%)   |  RRP £84.99

  In 1987, some 20 years after the original series had ended, Star Trek: the Next Generation was launched into a decade renowned for its materialistic greed, but also for its hesitant steps towards a more unified world order. Creator Gene Roddenberry revised his vision of humanity's future accordingly, shifting the Trek timeline 80 years on and reinventing the new Starship Enterprise as an Ark-like exploration vessel full of families, schools, soothing recreational facilities and a maternally pacifying computer voice (Roddenberry's wife, Majel Barrett). The Next Generation crew were not soldiers, but scientists and diplomats. Unlike the fiercely individualistic Captain Kirk, Patrick Stewart's patrician Captain Jean-Luc Picard was a model team leader: no matter how desperate the crisis, he ensured that everyone got to sit round the conference room table and talk it over. And in a true late-1980s touch, a key member of the Bridge crew was psychoanalyst Counsellor Troi, always on hand to discuss everyone's feelings. Even the slogan change to "Where no one has gone before" acknowledged that there's no "one" in a team. But for all its earnest political correctness and an over-reliance on "technobabble", good stories played by an appealing ensemble cast were at the heart of the show's success. --Paul Tonks On the DVD: Star Trek: The Next Generation comes to DVD in a distinctively packaged seven-disc set. This is reproduced for all seven series, thus forming a handsome collection. The outer gunmetal grey case is plastic, and the discs themselves are held in a rather flimsy cardboard fold-out sleeve. Each disc has nicely done animated menus and audio/subtitle options for each episode--though no "play all" facility. Disc 7 also includes bonus features in the shape of informative cast and crew interviews (both new and from the launch of Season 1), subdivided into four chapters: "The Beginning", "Selected Crew Analysis", "The Making of a Legend" and "Memorable Missions". Picture is adequate 4:3 with good Dolby 5.1 showing off the innovative sound effects. --Mark Walker

• Star Trek: the Next Generation-Complete... | Blu Ray | (02/03/2017) from £92.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Secret of NIMH | DVD | (03/09/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In his book, Robert C. O'Brien called his brave widow mouse "Mrs. Frisby", but Disney escapee animator Don Bluth must have thought children would laugh the wrong way at that. They renamed her "Mrs. Brisby" for The Secret of NIMH. That acronym stands for the National Institute of Mental Health, and the rats that live near Mrs. Brisby came from NIMH--they have strange ways. But they're the only ones who can save her house and her children, so Brisby seeks them out with the help of a humorous crow (Dom DeLuise). The magic gets laid on a little thick but this is Don Bluth's most successful attempt to achieve a complete, sincere, animated film. It's often forgotten, but it's a true surprise and a rare treat in the vast wasteland of insubstantial children's fare. --Keith Simanton, Amazon.com

• The Secret Of Nimh | DVD | (02/04/2001) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (37.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In his book, Robert C. O'Brien called his brave widow mouse "Mrs. Frisby", but Disney escapee animator Don Bluth must have thought children would laugh the wrong way at that. They renamed her "Mrs. Brisby" for The Secret of NIMH. That acronym stands for the National Institute of Mental Health, and the rats that live near Mrs. Brisby came from NIMH--they have strange ways. But they're the only ones who can save her house and her children, so Brisby seeks them out with the help of a humorous crow (Dom DeLuise). The magic gets laid on a little thick but this is Don Bluth's most successful attempt to achieve a complete, sincere, animated film. It's often forgotten, but it's a true surprise and a rare treat in the vast wasteland of insubstantial children's fare. --Keith Simanton, Amazon.com

• Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Best of Both Worlds | Blu Ray | (29/04/2013) from £9.95   |  Saving you £5.04 (50.65%)   |  RRP £14.99

  The powerful cliffhanger: The Best of Both Worlds Parts 1 and 2 has been fully restored in brilliant 1080p HD and seamlessly edited together into one feature-length presentation...and the crew of the Enterprise is asked: How do you stop an unstoppable foe? The Enterprise team discovers the devastated remains of a Federation colony as an ambitious young officer joins the crew to confirm the presence of the deadly Borg. Soon after, Borg drones abduct Captain Picard, mutilating him horribly as t...

• Toy Soldiers | Blu Ray | (02/02/2015) from £7.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (62.58%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Regis High School an exclusive prep school for delinquent teenage boys becomes the target of a terrorist attack in this action-adventure. Columbian drug lord and terrorist Louis Cali has travelled to the US to free his drug kingpin father. With a team of ruthless mercenaries Cali invades Regis High School in an attempt to capture the son of the federal judge presiding over his father’s trial. As Cali takes the students hostage the FBI and US Army remain helpless. Within the school however is a group of rebellious and mischievous students led by Billy Tepper and Joey Trotta who decide to put their expertise in avoiding authority to good use. Now years of bad behavior are about to pay off.

• Stand By Me 4K Ultra HD Steelbook | Blu Ray | (04/03/2024) from £31.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  In a small Oregon town, a group of friends, sensitive Gordie (Wil Wheaton),tough-guy Chris (River Phoenix), flamboyant Teddy (Corey Feldman), and scaredy-cat Vern (Jerry O'Connell) are in search of a missing teenagers body. Wanting to be heroes in each others and their hometowns eyes,they set out on an unforgettable two-day trek that turns into an odyssey ofself-discovery. When they encounter the towns knife-wielding bullies whoare also after the body, the boys discover a strength they never knew they had.

• Star Trek The Next Generation - Borg | DVD | (03/07/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  All the greatest episodes from the various Star Trek shows featuring the Federation's greatest ever enemy; the Borg! Episodes Comprise: 1. Regeneration 2. Q Who? 3. The Best Of Both Worlds (Parts 1 & 2) 4. I Borg 5. Descent (Parts 1 & 2) 6. Scorpion (Parts 1 & 2) 7. Drone 8. Dark Frontier 9. Unimatrix Zero (Parts 1 & 2) 10. Endgame

• Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 2 | DVD | (10/06/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £84.99

  Although the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1988-9) was curtailed by a writers’ strike, its 22 episodes nevertheless saw some refreshing new developments. Tasha Yar was gone, giving Worf more room to flex his muscles as Chief Security Officer; Geordi was promoted to Head of Engineering; Whoopi Goldberg’s mysterious Guinan presided benevolently over the crew’s rest area, Ten Forward; Dr. Crusher was replaced by the far more acerbic McCoy-like Dr. Pulaski; and mischievous super-entity Q returned to introduce Picard and the Enterprise crew to their greatest nemesis, The Borg. By the end of a transitional season the show had settled down enough to be acknowledged by all as a worthy successor to the 1960s original. On the DVD: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 2 comes packaged exactly like Season 1 in a solid metallic-style plastic outer case with a fold-out cardboard inner, although because of the fewer episodes this time there are only six discs not seven. Sound throughout is vivid Dolby Digital 5.1, with a full frame (1.33:1) picture that occasionally shows its age. Once again the menus neatly imitate the Enterprise’s own computer interfaces. Disc 6 contains the extra features: the "Mission Overview--Year 2" introduces the new characters and has producer Rick Berman revealing "We were all filled with piss and vinegar" at the success of the show; the "Selected Crew Analysis" continues the same thread interviewing Patrick Stewart, Levar Burton, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis and Diana Muldaur; the "Departmental Briefing" gives some background on special effects, writing, costumes, props and music; "Memorable Missions" highlights specific episodes and guest stars; finally, and best of all, is "Inside Starfleet Archives", a guided tour with Penny Juday around Paramount’s warehouses stuffed full of Star Trek props and memorabilia.--Mark Walker

• Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 3 | DVD | (22/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £84.99

  Let's make sure history never forgets the name Enterprise", remarks a steely Picard in "Yesterday's Enterprise", one of the highlights of Star Trek: The Next Generation's remarkable third season. Not a chance, Captain. Thanks to new uniforms, a new look and strong new writing, this was the Next Gen's breakthrough year. Cast changes solidified the team, with the return of Dr Crusher and LaForge now promoted to Chief Engineer. Worf got a meaty story arc all of his own ("The Sins of the Father") and Data made himself a daughter ("The Offspring"). Picard had a romantic vacation in "Captain's Holiday", and semi-regular crewmember Reg Barclay showed us that not everyone in Starfleet was perfect ("Hollow Pursuits"). By the time it reached its breathtaking Borg cliffhanger "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1", there was no longer any doubt that this show really was going where none had gone before. On the DVD Star Trek: The Next Generation's third season on disc comes packaged in the now-familiar solid grey outer casing containing a seven-disc fold-out. The extra features follow the same pattern as before, with a "Mission Overview" for Year 3 and "Selected Crew Analysis", in which the new, old and returning cast members talk about this season in then and now interviews. The "Departmental Briefing" looks behind the scenes at the Production, with comments from, among many others, executive producer Michael Piller, visual effects supervisor Dan Curry, technical advisor Mike Okuda, and new composer Jay Chattaway. The "Memorable Missions" looks at the many season highs. The 1.33:1 picture quality is better than ever before, as is the vivid Dolby 5.1 surround. --Mark Walker

• Toy Soldiers | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £6.99   |  Saving you £6.00 (85.84%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Regis High School an exclusive prep school for delinquent teenage boys becomes the target of a terrorist attack in this action-adventure. Columbian drug lord and terrorist Louis Cali has travelled to the US to free his drug kingpin father. With a team of ruthless mercenaries Cali invades Regis High School in an attempt to capture the son of the federal judge presiding over his father’s trial. As Cali takes the students hostage the FBI and US Army remain helpless. Within the school however is a group of rebellious and mischievous students led by Billy Tepper and Joey Trotta who decide to put their expertise in avoiding authority to good use. Now years of bad behavior are about to pay off…

• Star Trek Next Generation Series 7 | DVD | (22/05/2006) from £17.98   |  Saving you £19.00 (118.82%)   |  RRP £34.99

  ""Space... The final frontier... These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: To explore strange new worlds... To seek out new life; new civilisations... To boldly go where no one has gone before!"" - Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) The complete seventh season of Star Trek: The Next Generation one of the finest sci-fi shows of all-time. Episodes Comprise: 1. Descent (Part 2) 2. Liasons 3. Interface 4. Gambit (Part 1) 5. Gambit (P

• Trail Beyond | DVD | (16/01/2006) from £14.99   |  Saving you £-2.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Misfits. Underachievers. Rebels. The boys of the Regis School have been kicked out of the best prep schools in America. Terrorists just took over the campus. Now years of bad behavior are about to pay off! The Regis School (better known by students as the ""Rejects School"") is where America's most powerful families send their wayward sons after they've been kicked out of the better prep schools. But faced with certain death at the hands of the terrorists the toughest of the tr

• Stand By Me | DVD | (10/12/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A sleeper hit when released in 1986, Stand by Me is based on Stephen King's novella "The Body" (from the book Different Seasons); but it's more about the joys and pains of boyhood friendship than a morbid fascination with corpses. It's about four boys ages 12 and 13 (Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell) who take an overnight hike through the woods near their Oregon town to find the body of a boy who's been missing for days. Their journey includes a variety of scary adventures (including a ferocious junkyard dog, a swamp full of leeches and a treacherous leap from a train trestle), but it's also a time for personal revelations, quiet interludes and the raucous comradeship of best friends. Set in the 1950s, the movie indulges an overabundance of anachronistic profanity and a kind of idealistic, golden-toned nostalgia (it's told in flashback as a story written by Wheaton's character as an adult, played by Richard Dreyfuss). But it's delightfully entertaining from start to finish, thanks to the rapport among its young cast members and the timeless, universal themes of friendship, family and the building of character and self-esteem. Kiefer Sutherland makes a memorable teenage villain and look closely for John Cusack in a flashback scene as Wheaton's now-deceased and dearly missed brother. A genuine crowd-pleaser, this heartfelt movie led director Rob Reiner to even greater success with his next film, The Princess Bride. --Jeff Shannon

• Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 6 | DVD | (02/12/2002) from £29.86   |  Saving you £55.13 (184.63%)   |  RRP £84.99

  As the sixth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation went into production, everyone knew that attentions would soon be permanently divided by the debut of Deep Space Nine. Sure enough that meant crossovers ("Birthright"), guest stars and references back and forth. The sense of baton-passing drew the TNG family closer, however. Directorial debuts begun in Season 5 allowed for repeat group-huddle ownership of several shows. Jonathan Frakes bettered "The Quality of Life" by "The Chase", which finally offered an explanation why most races in the Trek universe are humanoid with knobbly foreheads. Patrick Stewart crowbarred a Western into the franchise in "A Fistful of Datas". LeVar Burton introduced the far more exciting Riker clone Thomas in "Second Chances". But here we still find that inability to follow through a good idea, since it was intended for Tom to replace Will. Barclay outstayed his welcome with a lacklustre "Ship in a Bottle" (despite a hammy cameo from Stephanie Beacham) after he'd injected creepiness into "Realm of Fear". The same happened with Q and the painfully weak "True Q" contrasted by the philosophically challenging "Tapestry", where Picard faced the decisions of his youth. Yet ultimately the year provided more memorable moments than either year 5 did or year 7 would. There was the fun of a pint-sized Starfleet in "Rascals", the shocking comment on political torture in "Chain of Command", the endless Matrix-like guessing game of reality in "Frame of Mind", and even a jokey genre nod often called "Die Hard Picard" instead of "Starship Mine". The two biggest attention-drawing moments came via stellar cameos. There was the bittersweet sight of James Doohan revisiting the original Enterprise Bridge on "Relics", then a quick contribution by Stephen Hawking in the cliff-hanger "Descent". Both were attempts at keeping TNG the connoisseur's Trek incarnation of choice. --Paul Tonks

• The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek | DVD | (25/04/2023) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A