This week on Just The Thing, we're heading into the low-budget wasteland of early '90s straight-to-video sci-fi as we drop John Carpenter's shapeshifting nightmare into Circuitry Man and its bonkers sequel, Circuitry Man II: Plughead Rewired.

Joel and Chris explore these forgotten cyberpunk curios, discussing killer cyborgs, brain-addling biochips, post-apocalyptic world-building, and why low-budget sci-fi so often punches well above its weight. Along the way, they celebrate the weird charm of direct-to-video cinema and ask the question that really matters: what happens when a creature that can become anyone encounters a world obsessed with replacing humanity with technology?

Come with us on a journey back to a time when the choice of which movie to rent was based solely on an imaginative VHS cover.

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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

This week on Just The Thing, we re-release one of our old Patreon episodes as it's becoming more and more relevant in the lead up to Avengers: Doomsday. Yes, we're dropping the shapeshifting nightmare from The Thing into the bright, optimistic world of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, a film that already features a Thing!

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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

This week on Just The Thing, we head into space again with Predator: Badlands, and for the first time in the show’s history, Joel and Chris find themselves on opposite sides of the battlefield. Joel had a surprisingly good time with this new entry in the franchise… Chris, on the other hand, absolutely did not.

Along the way they revisit the original Predator, discuss where the series has gone since, and Chris gets stuck on an important piece of world-building: do Predators use toilets?

Eventually, as always, the conversation circles back to the real question: what happens when you drop the creature from The Thing into a Predator hunting ground? Would the ultimate hunter recognise the ultimate imitator — or would it already be too late?

Find us on social media https://linktr.ee/justthethingpod

Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio