March elicits images of lions, lambs, bunnies, chicks, and brightly colored eggs in baskets. The tradition of giving out decorated eggs hails back to ?pagan? practices from thousands of years ago that celebrate spring and new life. The tradition in science-fiction, however, indicates that eggs are usually evil, and lead to very bad things.

In honor of the tradition, I?m giving you a list of 10 episodes of sci-fi/fantasy series from the past ten years that contain eggs bearing ? things.

1. Bezoar eggs from the "Bad Eggs" episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" contained tentacled creatures that attached themselves to the faces and brains of Sunnydale high schoolers. The eggs, which were handed out in sex ed class as "babies" high school couples have to care for, were being laid by a bezoar, a giant creature under the school, which was using its offspring to lure people in to be bezoar food.

The only two people not affected by the bezoar progeny are Buffy, who stabbed hers shortly after it hatched from an egg, and Xander, who hard boiled his egg ? and almost bit into its contents for lunch.

2. Demon eggs in the "Buffy" episode "As You Were," were stored underneath Spike?s crypt. Riley Finn appeared in Sunnydale over a year after leaving Buffy behind. Back to hunt down a demon to find its eggs to destroy them before they hatch, Riley and his new wife wreak havoc in Buffy?s personal life and pound the final nail on the coffin for Buffy?s tryst with Spike.

Buffy finds the eggs as they hatch, and spidery creatures come running out of them.

Why do sci-fi eggs almost always have spiders in them? Why can?t they have kittens on occasion?

3. There has been one case where a hatch eggs yields something somewhat like a kitten. In "Surface," teenager Miles and his friends find eggs in the ocean by their beachfront homes. He brings one home and keeps it in his fish tank.

Soon, the fish are gone, and the egg has hatched into a baby sea creature that can generate electricity and heal injuries. The creature, which Miles names Nimrod, bonds to Miles, who, after being saved by Nimrod from death, begins to exhibit the amphibious qualities that Nimrod has.

The bond between Miles and Nimrod was a very endearing aspect of this unjustly short-lived series.

4. In the "Stargate: Atlantis" episode "Conversion," Sheppard is given a drug that is supposed to inhibit Wraith-like characteristics he?s developed after being bitten by the Wraith, Ellia. Her bite transferred a quantity of the iratus bug retrovirus into his bloodstream. Sheppard, Beckett and team return to the iratus planet.

With the drug wearing off, Sheppard enters a cave and leaps to one of the egg sacks on the ceiling, extracting a cup full of iratus eggs. The drug wears off, and he emerges from the cave a monster. After Ronon disables Sheppard, Beckett gathers the eggs and determines they will be enough to produce a cure. The lesson here? Sometimes bad eggs can be good.

5. In the "Torchwood" episode "Something Borrowed," carnivorous alien shape-shifters called Nostrovites have a taste for human flesh, hunt in pairs and mate for life. When they reproduce, after fertilization, the female passes her eggs to the male, who stores them in a protective pouch in the throat, where they can be passed into a suitable (human) host through a bite. The eggs are incubated within the host until they are ready to hatch; the female then tracks down the host and tears them open to free the offspring. The lesson here? Bad eggs can kill you.

6. There is a similar story in "The Scourge" in Season 9 of "Stargate SG-1." A bug-creature breeds inside a scientist making him ill. When the eggs hatch inside the scientist, the bugs begin eating the scientist from the inside out. They burst out of the scientist and spread throughout the base. They begin reproducing at an alarming rate, and begin to overrun the base, eating the personnel. Bad eggs can eat you up.

7. In "Andromeda," the Magog eat sentient beings, whether human, Nietzschean, or other beings, and reproduce by laying their eggs in another living being. When they hunt, the Magog eat everyone in their path, but spare a few victims to incubate their offspring. Their larvae grow in host bodies, and eat their way out at maturity. During the process, the larvae absorb some of the host's DNA so the outcomes of their births vary. The lesson? See No. 6.

8. When The Doctor and Rose see "The End of the World" in a 2005 episode of "Doctor Who," metallic spiders (spider again!) begin to hatch from egg-like gifts given out by the Adherents of the Repeated Meme. The spiders sabotage the viewing station in space, endangering the lives of everyone on board. Even mechanical eggs are evil.

9. In the "Invasion" episode "The Nest," Dr. Mariel examines the tissue from a growth she finds inside herself. At first she thought it might be cancer, but it turned out to be a cluster of eggs. Mariel realizes that this "isn't a tumor. It's like it's some kind of giant ovary."

We learn from another case of what appears to be a pregnant psycho killer, that the woman had been carrying around more of the body-snatching creatures being developed to take over the world. See what happens when you don?t use a condom? Or a machete?

10. In "Star Trek: Enterprise," Capt. Archer goes to extreme lengths to save an abandoned nest of eggs in a Xindi insectoid "Hatchery." I really disliked this episode, because I was sympathetic to the cute little Xindi-bug babies in this one, and thought the crew of the Enterprise was extremely irrational. The lesson? Bad stories can kill a series.

If someone gives you eggs this week leftover from Easter, just make sure you hard-boil them before you turn your back on them. You never know what?s cooking up inside them.

"Ten Forward" is a monthly column by Robin Brownfield, a staff writer for Airlock Alpha out of New Jersey, celebrating Airlock Alpha's 10th anniversary. Robin can be reached at rbrownfield@airlockalpha.com.