27. MAN & MACHINE: When one interacts with the other, both are forever changed.

Originally airing on NBC on April 7, 1986, Annihilator was an unsold pilot for a TV series that would never be made.

Robert Armour (Mark Lindsay Chapman, Arcane from Swamp Thing the TV series) is dating Angela (Catherine Mary Stewart), another reporter. But when she returns from a girls only Hawaiian vacation with her friend Cindy (Lisa Blount), she’s not the same. That’s because their flight was taken by aliens and they’ve been replaced by killer androids who will destroy the human race.

Director Michael Chapman directed The Clan of the Cave Bear the same year this was released and shot The Last Detail, Taxi Driver, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Hardcore, Raging Bull, The Lost Boys, Ghostbusters II and so many more films. So this looks way better than it should. It was written by the father and son team of Roderick and Bruce Taylor, who also created the series Otherworld and Super Force. Roderick wrote Gator and Bruce, well, he wrote Elves so he’s good in my mind. More than good.

Oh yeah: These aliens — known as Dynamatars — are also super Satanic.

So anyways, Robert ends up killing Angela after she murders their dog and then comes after him. He rams her with a Jeep and then goes on the run from both the alien androids and the police, setting this up like The Fugitive versus Terminator with a bit of The Invaders.

We also get Nicole Eggert as a teenage robot killer, Geoffrey Lewis as her plot explaining professor father, an appearance by Earl Boen to really hammer that Terminator Home Edition point home, Brion James as a biker and the hints of an alien leader in the shadows who carries around some kind of spell book.

Somehow, this had the budget to have “Ashes to Ashes” by David Bowie play repeatedly, no complaints.

With a cast full of scream queens I had crushes on, a weird Miami Vice-like music video way of shooting the show and a conspiracy plot, I wish this had become a series. It would have lasted 11 of 12 episodes with the last one only airing in Europe as a TV movie edited together from several of the stories.

You can watch this on YouTube.