Wednesday, October 31, 2012
When You Wish Upon a Death Star...
I assumed this was a hoax until pretty much everyone confirmed it.
Holy crap. Disney owns Star Wars.
Holy crap. They're making Episode VII.
There are two things that need to be said at the outset. One, even if Episode VII is the worst thing since bagpipes, it won't do more damage to the Star Wars brand than Lucas inflicted circa 1999-2005. At this point, the franchise is buried so badly that any further digging would actually make it pass the planet core and start heading back towards the surface. Two, even if the prequels didn't suck, there is already proof that people other than George Lucas can write and direct a good Star Wars film. And that proof is the best Star Wars film, which was directed by Irvin Kershner and written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan.
Now, if I were the top Disney exec, the first thing I'd do is get Timothy Zahn on the line, grab the film rights to the Thrawn trilogy, and then get either Christopher Nolan or J.J. Abrams to do a pass on the script. I'd specifically look for those two because we've seen from Batman and Star Trek what they can do with stale, worn-out franchises.
Then I'd cast Nathan Fillion as Talon Karrde and Christoph Waltz as Grand Admiral Thrawn. And then, while the internet exploded, I would plaster the Death Star all over Space Mountain.
Holy crap. Disney owns Star Wars.
Holy crap. They're making Episode VII.
There are two things that need to be said at the outset. One, even if Episode VII is the worst thing since bagpipes, it won't do more damage to the Star Wars brand than Lucas inflicted circa 1999-2005. At this point, the franchise is buried so badly that any further digging would actually make it pass the planet core and start heading back towards the surface. Two, even if the prequels didn't suck, there is already proof that people other than George Lucas can write and direct a good Star Wars film. And that proof is the best Star Wars film, which was directed by Irvin Kershner and written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan.
Now, if I were the top Disney exec, the first thing I'd do is get Timothy Zahn on the line, grab the film rights to the Thrawn trilogy, and then get either Christopher Nolan or J.J. Abrams to do a pass on the script. I'd specifically look for those two because we've seen from Batman and Star Trek what they can do with stale, worn-out franchises.
Then I'd cast Nathan Fillion as Talon Karrde and Christoph Waltz as Grand Admiral Thrawn. And then, while the internet exploded, I would plaster the Death Star all over Space Mountain.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
B5: Acts of Sacrifice
"If peace on this station is the only way to win the war at home, then peace we will give them!"
-G'Kar, in a way that text on a screen can't do justice.
First off, an explanation of how these reviews are going: as I work my way through Season 2, episodes that I think are "Arc" episodes will get their own reviews. On days that I watch a standalone,* I'll go back and re-cap a stretch of earlier episodes until I'm caught up. I could say that the reason I'm doing this is becausea lot most of the standalone episodes have stuff planted in them that only becomes relevant later on, but the real reason is because I neglected to do reviews as I went along, and this is the easiest way for me to catch up.
*Yes, there is no such thing as a standalone episode, because see my above comment about all the Chekhov's Guns.
So the first thing that needs to be said about "Acts of Sacrifice" is that it's the episode that convinced me that Andreas Katsulas was the best actor on the show. He's got a lot of competition, because almost everyone is pitch-perfect. Yes, I ragged on Mira Furlan's accent and how I thought it took Richard Biggs a while to figure out how to play Dr. Franklin, but Biggs had gotten it down pat by the time Season 2 rolled around (seriously, compare his performance in the scene where he turns out to be the leader of the underground psychic railroad in "A Race Through Dark Places" to his first scene in "Infection" and you'll see what I mean), and Furlan's accent is only distracting when she's yelling at someone (and skipping words like "the") - and most of the time she's being the Spock to one character's McCoy and another character's Worf.
(Hey, I know I'm not supposed to mention DS9 in these reviews, but I can mention TOS and TNG characters, right? Oh frak me, Worf was on DS9 after TNG wrapped.)
Where was I? Oh right, Proud Warrior Race Guy with a massive grudge against one of the other major species because, among other things, they killed his father.
Now, I never saw The Gathering, so there was really only one episode ("Midnight on the Firing Line") where G'Kar was blatantly the bad guy. Since then, he's slowly become more sympathetic, while Londo... Remember back in my review of "Midnight on the Firing Line" when I said Londo was a Sicilian? Well, he has his own Godfather II moment here where he realizes that his newfound power has cost him his friends, and now he's all alone. (There is another possibility here, but I somehow doubt that Londo has fond memories of going sledding as a kid.)
But just because Londo's becoming an evil bureaucrat who's trapped in a Faustian bargain doesn't mean that G'Kar automatically becomes a good guy. Delenn points out that eventually, the Narns will regain their war footing and it'll be the Centauri who need help; the two sides just really want the other one dead no matter what, and that can make life difficult for someone dedicated to peace.
Speaking of making life difficult, Ivanova's Big Delegated Task this week is to seal an alliance with... I forgot the name of their species, so I'm just going to call them the Darynan. Why? Because they're a bunch of social darwinists and Darynan is the best anagram of "Ayn Rand" that I could come up with in 30 seconds. Okay, excuse me, they're the Lumati. As I said, they're a bunch of social darwinists who basically think it's a-okay to completely ignore the suffering of inferior people. (Gee, way back in "Midnight on the Firing Line," Ambassador Kosh told Sinclair to ignore the Centauri-Narn conflict because "they are a dying people." Hmm...) But they agree to an alliance once they see that B5's social safety net is basically a big neon sign that says "this way to the slums" - which they accomplish by visiting one of the slums, where all parties are involved are apparently a-okay with the slum being treated as a zoo. I swear, this is the most bizarre thing I've seen on this show, and that includes Londo's Season 1 haircut. I'm trying to imagine walking down the streets of Chicago and talking very loudly about how wonderful a place it is because the worthless people are reduced to begging for money. Are the bums of the future all medicated so that they never cause any major diplomatic incidents?
Speaking of major diplomatic incidents, there's a whole Capulets-and-Montagues thing going on with the Centauri and Narn commoners, which ends up getting a jerk Centauri (whom I'll call Tybalt) killed. G'Kar knows that a) those Centauri jerks have it coming, and b) actually getting revenge on them will have disastrous consequences for his attempts to elicit support from the humans and Mimbari. This is where Andreas Katsulas shines. He's trapped under more prosthetics than any of the other major players, and I've seen Doctor Who documentaries where the actors under prosthetics say they have to over-act in order for their facial expressions to transmit through all that... whatever-it-is. But in the shouting match between G'Kar and Sheridan, Katsulas manages to convey everything he needs to without out-melodrama-ing Bruce Boxleitner. Later on, he tries to calm the Narn commoners' Occupy B5 and manages to be both nakedly emotional and utterly reptilian in the same scene.
If you've read a lot of my reviews, you know I don't ever go on this much about acting. That's how impressed I am with Katsulas's performance in this episode. Granted, this is a bit undermined by the ridiculous fight scene at the end... but only a bit.
(I'd also like to note that this is the second episode in a row where a B5 ambassador is told that they're not truly representative of their species anymore because they've been tainted by the humans. Let's see if that goes somewhere...)
Speaking of being tainted by humans, there's the rest of Ivanova's B-plot. It turns out the Lumati seal their negotiations by having sex. Now, this aired on PTEN, not HBO, so you can already guess that it ain't gonna happen... but after Ivanova realizes that the Lumati rep has no idea what human sex is like, she gets him to agree to do it "human-style," which (in her version) involves her doing a dance where she acts like a stereotypical womanizer, blowing off a lot of steam about past one-night stands (okay I'm making that up - we haven't seen any evidence that she sleeps around) and then faking it during a really good handshake.This is either hilarious or completely over-the-top. Take your pick.
(Yeah, I disagree with the decision to make Ivanova funny. I thought she was plenty funny when she was the station's resident no-nonsense ice queen with a great pessimistic streak.)
Sheridan and Delenn work under the table to get a tiny bit of support for the Narns. This isn't want G'Kar wanted, (he wanted public military support, not covert supplies and a bit of refugee-evacuating) but he realizes that it's all he can get. (I'd also like to note that only Sheridan, not Delenn, is capable of looking G'Kar in the eye during this scene. May or may not be significant.)
Finally, Londo completely ignores the chance to cause more trouble by not making a big issue of Tybalt's death. In return, Garibaldi has a drink with Londo. D'aaaaw, he has his friend back.
The relationship dynamic on B5 has shifted somewhat since Sinclair left, and that might be part of the reason why JMS wanted to write the character out. (Everyone involved in that decision - including actor Michael O'Hare - wanted Sinclair to leave the show, and I'm not going to get into that right now.) While Garibaldi is still on much better terms with Londo than with G'Kar, Sheridan came onto the scene right when Londo started down the slippery slope, and his experience with the two ambassadors is untainted by G'Kar's Season 1 antagonism. We see this dynamic in effect after Tybalt's corpse has been discovered; Garibaldi jumps to the (logical) conclusion that he was killed by a Narn because of his friendship with Londo, whereas Sheridan wants to wait until they actually have all the facts.
"The Coming of Shadows" painted both G'Kar and Londo in unflattering lights. G'Kar was plotting to publicly assassinate the Centauri Emperor; Londo targeted a Narn colony for obliteration in order to further his own political power. Now, even though Londo and G'Kar are both seen being voices of reason - Londo basically ignoring a dead Centauri provocateur and G'Kar trying to stop a bunch of Narn provocateurs - and even though we do sympathize at least a bit with Londo when Garibaldi barely gives him the time of day, our sympathies in general are more with G'Kar this time. (Maybe Londo's new black coat has something to do with it.)
-G'Kar, in a way that text on a screen can't do justice.
First off, an explanation of how these reviews are going: as I work my way through Season 2, episodes that I think are "Arc" episodes will get their own reviews. On days that I watch a standalone,* I'll go back and re-cap a stretch of earlier episodes until I'm caught up. I could say that the reason I'm doing this is because
*Yes, there is no such thing as a standalone episode, because see my above comment about all the Chekhov's Guns.
So the first thing that needs to be said about "Acts of Sacrifice" is that it's the episode that convinced me that Andreas Katsulas was the best actor on the show. He's got a lot of competition, because almost everyone is pitch-perfect. Yes, I ragged on Mira Furlan's accent and how I thought it took Richard Biggs a while to figure out how to play Dr. Franklin, but Biggs had gotten it down pat by the time Season 2 rolled around (seriously, compare his performance in the scene where he turns out to be the leader of the underground psychic railroad in "A Race Through Dark Places" to his first scene in "Infection" and you'll see what I mean), and Furlan's accent is only distracting when she's yelling at someone (and skipping words like "the") - and most of the time she's being the Spock to one character's McCoy and another character's Worf.
(Hey, I know I'm not supposed to mention DS9 in these reviews, but I can mention TOS and TNG characters, right? Oh frak me, Worf was on DS9 after TNG wrapped.)
Where was I? Oh right, Proud Warrior Race Guy with a massive grudge against one of the other major species because, among other things, they killed his father.
Now, I never saw The Gathering, so there was really only one episode ("Midnight on the Firing Line") where G'Kar was blatantly the bad guy. Since then, he's slowly become more sympathetic, while Londo... Remember back in my review of "Midnight on the Firing Line" when I said Londo was a Sicilian? Well, he has his own Godfather II moment here where he realizes that his newfound power has cost him his friends, and now he's all alone. (There is another possibility here, but I somehow doubt that Londo has fond memories of going sledding as a kid.)
But just because Londo's becoming an evil bureaucrat who's trapped in a Faustian bargain doesn't mean that G'Kar automatically becomes a good guy. Delenn points out that eventually, the Narns will regain their war footing and it'll be the Centauri who need help; the two sides just really want the other one dead no matter what, and that can make life difficult for someone dedicated to peace.
Speaking of making life difficult, Ivanova's Big Delegated Task this week is to seal an alliance with... I forgot the name of their species, so I'm just going to call them the Darynan. Why? Because they're a bunch of social darwinists and Darynan is the best anagram of "Ayn Rand" that I could come up with in 30 seconds. Okay, excuse me, they're the Lumati. As I said, they're a bunch of social darwinists who basically think it's a-okay to completely ignore the suffering of inferior people. (Gee, way back in "Midnight on the Firing Line," Ambassador Kosh told Sinclair to ignore the Centauri-Narn conflict because "they are a dying people." Hmm...) But they agree to an alliance once they see that B5's social safety net is basically a big neon sign that says "this way to the slums" - which they accomplish by visiting one of the slums, where all parties are involved are apparently a-okay with the slum being treated as a zoo. I swear, this is the most bizarre thing I've seen on this show, and that includes Londo's Season 1 haircut. I'm trying to imagine walking down the streets of Chicago and talking very loudly about how wonderful a place it is because the worthless people are reduced to begging for money. Are the bums of the future all medicated so that they never cause any major diplomatic incidents?
Speaking of major diplomatic incidents, there's a whole Capulets-and-Montagues thing going on with the Centauri and Narn commoners, which ends up getting a jerk Centauri (whom I'll call Tybalt) killed. G'Kar knows that a) those Centauri jerks have it coming, and b) actually getting revenge on them will have disastrous consequences for his attempts to elicit support from the humans and Mimbari. This is where Andreas Katsulas shines. He's trapped under more prosthetics than any of the other major players, and I've seen Doctor Who documentaries where the actors under prosthetics say they have to over-act in order for their facial expressions to transmit through all that... whatever-it-is. But in the shouting match between G'Kar and Sheridan, Katsulas manages to convey everything he needs to without out-melodrama-ing Bruce Boxleitner. Later on, he tries to calm the Narn commoners' Occupy B5 and manages to be both nakedly emotional and utterly reptilian in the same scene.
If you've read a lot of my reviews, you know I don't ever go on this much about acting. That's how impressed I am with Katsulas's performance in this episode. Granted, this is a bit undermined by the ridiculous fight scene at the end... but only a bit.
(I'd also like to note that this is the second episode in a row where a B5 ambassador is told that they're not truly representative of their species anymore because they've been tainted by the humans. Let's see if that goes somewhere...)
Speaking of being tainted by humans, there's the rest of Ivanova's B-plot. It turns out the Lumati seal their negotiations by having sex. Now, this aired on PTEN, not HBO, so you can already guess that it ain't gonna happen... but after Ivanova realizes that the Lumati rep has no idea what human sex is like, she gets him to agree to do it "human-style," which (in her version) involves her doing a dance where she acts like a stereotypical womanizer, blowing off a lot of steam about past one-night stands (okay I'm making that up - we haven't seen any evidence that she sleeps around) and then faking it during a really good handshake.This is either hilarious or completely over-the-top. Take your pick.
(Yeah, I disagree with the decision to make Ivanova funny. I thought she was plenty funny when she was the station's resident no-nonsense ice queen with a great pessimistic streak.)
Sheridan and Delenn work under the table to get a tiny bit of support for the Narns. This isn't want G'Kar wanted, (he wanted public military support, not covert supplies and a bit of refugee-evacuating) but he realizes that it's all he can get. (I'd also like to note that only Sheridan, not Delenn, is capable of looking G'Kar in the eye during this scene. May or may not be significant.)
Finally, Londo completely ignores the chance to cause more trouble by not making a big issue of Tybalt's death. In return, Garibaldi has a drink with Londo. D'aaaaw, he has his friend back.
The relationship dynamic on B5 has shifted somewhat since Sinclair left, and that might be part of the reason why JMS wanted to write the character out. (Everyone involved in that decision - including actor Michael O'Hare - wanted Sinclair to leave the show, and I'm not going to get into that right now.) While Garibaldi is still on much better terms with Londo than with G'Kar, Sheridan came onto the scene right when Londo started down the slippery slope, and his experience with the two ambassadors is untainted by G'Kar's Season 1 antagonism. We see this dynamic in effect after Tybalt's corpse has been discovered; Garibaldi jumps to the (logical) conclusion that he was killed by a Narn because of his friendship with Londo, whereas Sheridan wants to wait until they actually have all the facts.
"The Coming of Shadows" painted both G'Kar and Londo in unflattering lights. G'Kar was plotting to publicly assassinate the Centauri Emperor; Londo targeted a Narn colony for obliteration in order to further his own political power. Now, even though Londo and G'Kar are both seen being voices of reason - Londo basically ignoring a dead Centauri provocateur and G'Kar trying to stop a bunch of Narn provocateurs - and even though we do sympathize at least a bit with Londo when Garibaldi barely gives him the time of day, our sympathies in general are more with G'Kar this time. (Maybe Londo's new black coat has something to do with it.)
Because I like to do things like this.
Whenever somebody mentions the song "Phantom of the Opera," I always pretend they're talking about the relatively obscure Iron Maiden song. When they say "the Andrew Lloyd Webber" song, I say, "Oh, you mean 'Echoes' by Pink Floyd?"
By the way, the Iron Maiden song is freaking awesome.
By the way, the Iron Maiden song is freaking awesome.
Telepaths (and B5: "All Alone in the Night")
In 1963, a guy named Sidney Newman asked some other folks to come up with ideas for an affordable science-fiction show. Their response: telepaths or time-travel.
History records that he picked time-travel. But did you know that one of the first companions (as in, there were three original companions and this was one of them) was the Doctor's own semi-telepathic grand-daughter?
She got dumped from the show when the writers decided they didn't like the character/the actress thought she wasn't getting any character development.
I mention this because I just saw the Babylon 5 episode "All Alone in the Night," which ends with Sheridan & Co. founding a conspiracy against EarthGov. EarthGov is supported by the Psy Corps, which is made up of telepaths.
So I have two questions: how long can that conspiracy possibly remain a secret, and two, why do writers keep throwing telepaths into their stories? (And three: why does my spell-check not seem to want to make up its mind about whether or not "telepaths" is a real word?)
This post will focus on the second question, because, well, I haven't seen the entire show and I'm not entirely sure how my spell-check works, so I'm not qualified to answer either of the others.
If you're doing a series about an evil, intrusive police state (and B5 is certainly setting EarthGov up as that), then having evil, intrusive mind-readers seems like a good idea. Nobody wants their private thoughts scanned, after all. But then you start your heroes off on their quest to overthrow the government, and eventually you're going to get to a point where the audience is asking, "hey, how come the telepaths aren't catching that one?"
Yes, it's a cliche of writing that the Evil Empire needs to be big and bad and scarily efficient... until it's hunting down the good guys, at which point it's staffed entirely by graduates of the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy. Or that the Overlord's plan goes off completely without a hitch... only he overlooked one tiny technical detail when he was building his giant Death Star. Or that an evil Empire with enough resources to build two Death Stars couldn't bother to repeat its trick in the first film of sticking a tracking device on one particular ship to lead them right to-
Okay you get the point, moving on.
Any audience is smart. A science-fiction/fantasy audience, which has to take into account all sorts of new rules that don't apply in our world, has to be even smarter. They are going to spot the loose thread at the edge of your carefully-constructed tapestry... and if it's a big enough thread, they're going to pull the whole thing apart. (To go back to Star Wars again, how could a hyperdrive-less Millennium Falcon get from one star system to another in Empire before the cast aged to death? Or insert-logical-contradiction-from-the-prequels-here.)
Bluntly, telepaths do not work in conspiracy stories. Yes, yes, JMS set this thing up about how "deep scans" - the useful ones - are technically inadmissible as evidence. Like that's going to stop an evil government run by a man who assassinated his predecessor.
Now I'm gonna pivot and dissect "All Alone" a bit more. The A-plot is what I'm gonna call Standard Sci-Fi Schlock - the same sort of thing we saw last season in, say, "Infection." The idea of taking representatives of different species and making them fight either just for the evulz or for the purposes of launching an invasion has been done just a few times before. And given all the balls in the air already, I'd be kind of surprised if we saw those folks again.
The B-plot sees Delenn being kicked out of the Grey Council and replaced by a member of the Warrior Caste. This is bad because it signifies that the Grey Council is getting more militant and reactionary. The militant thing isn't necessarily bad, but they kinda do need to make an alliance with the humans in order to win the Great War that the opening narration has been promising us all season. So yeah, this is very much significant to the overall story... problem is, Delenn's accent just makes it hard for me to take her seriously when she's supposed to be making a desperate, impassioned argument. That's just me.
Oh, and Lennier agrees to get his career permanently stalled because really, the poor guy is second only to DS9's Odo in the "hopelessly obsessed with one particular woman who's way out of his reach" category inevitably going to get compared to somebody on That Show You Shouldn't Mention In The Presence Of A Diehard B5 Fan.
And in the middle of his story, Sheridan gets some sort of vision that'll probably pay off.
And then the last five minutes finally reveal why Sheridan's been kind of a jerk so far this season. (What do I mean by that? Compare the amount of stuff he delegates to Ivanova and Garibaldi to what Sinclair did.) He's been watching them to determine if they're loyal. At least, I assume that's why he's been doing it. Cuz otherwise he's just this guy who wants to make his second-in-command do everything while he goes off in his starfighter to have adventures.
History records that he picked time-travel. But did you know that one of the first companions (as in, there were three original companions and this was one of them) was the Doctor's own semi-telepathic grand-daughter?
She got dumped from the show when the writers decided they didn't like the character/the actress thought she wasn't getting any character development.
I mention this because I just saw the Babylon 5 episode "All Alone in the Night," which ends with Sheridan & Co. founding a conspiracy against EarthGov. EarthGov is supported by the Psy Corps, which is made up of telepaths.
So I have two questions: how long can that conspiracy possibly remain a secret, and two, why do writers keep throwing telepaths into their stories? (And three: why does my spell-check not seem to want to make up its mind about whether or not "telepaths" is a real word?)
This post will focus on the second question, because, well, I haven't seen the entire show and I'm not entirely sure how my spell-check works, so I'm not qualified to answer either of the others.
If you're doing a series about an evil, intrusive police state (and B5 is certainly setting EarthGov up as that), then having evil, intrusive mind-readers seems like a good idea. Nobody wants their private thoughts scanned, after all. But then you start your heroes off on their quest to overthrow the government, and eventually you're going to get to a point where the audience is asking, "hey, how come the telepaths aren't catching that one?"
Yes, it's a cliche of writing that the Evil Empire needs to be big and bad and scarily efficient... until it's hunting down the good guys, at which point it's staffed entirely by graduates of the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy. Or that the Overlord's plan goes off completely without a hitch... only he overlooked one tiny technical detail when he was building his giant Death Star. Or that an evil Empire with enough resources to build two Death Stars couldn't bother to repeat its trick in the first film of sticking a tracking device on one particular ship to lead them right to-
Okay you get the point, moving on.
Any audience is smart. A science-fiction/fantasy audience, which has to take into account all sorts of new rules that don't apply in our world, has to be even smarter. They are going to spot the loose thread at the edge of your carefully-constructed tapestry... and if it's a big enough thread, they're going to pull the whole thing apart. (To go back to Star Wars again, how could a hyperdrive-less Millennium Falcon get from one star system to another in Empire before the cast aged to death? Or insert-logical-contradiction-from-the-prequels-here.)
Bluntly, telepaths do not work in conspiracy stories. Yes, yes, JMS set this thing up about how "deep scans" - the useful ones - are technically inadmissible as evidence. Like that's going to stop an evil government run by a man who assassinated his predecessor.
Now I'm gonna pivot and dissect "All Alone" a bit more. The A-plot is what I'm gonna call Standard Sci-Fi Schlock - the same sort of thing we saw last season in, say, "Infection." The idea of taking representatives of different species and making them fight either just for the evulz or for the purposes of launching an invasion has been done just a few times before. And given all the balls in the air already, I'd be kind of surprised if we saw those folks again.
The B-plot sees Delenn being kicked out of the Grey Council and replaced by a member of the Warrior Caste. This is bad because it signifies that the Grey Council is getting more militant and reactionary. The militant thing isn't necessarily bad, but they kinda do need to make an alliance with the humans in order to win the Great War that the opening narration has been promising us all season. So yeah, this is very much significant to the overall story... problem is, Delenn's accent just makes it hard for me to take her seriously when she's supposed to be making a desperate, impassioned argument. That's just me.
Oh, and Lennier agrees to get his career permanently stalled because really, the poor guy is
And in the middle of his story, Sheridan gets some sort of vision that'll probably pay off.
And then the last five minutes finally reveal why Sheridan's been kind of a jerk so far this season. (What do I mean by that? Compare the amount of stuff he delegates to Ivanova and Garibaldi to what Sinclair did.) He's been watching them to determine if they're loyal. At least, I assume that's why he's been doing it. Cuz otherwise he's just this guy who wants to make his second-in-command do everything while he goes off in his starfighter to have adventures.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
I've noticed a trend
So there's this old rule where if a novel has a dog on the cover art as well as an award stamped on the cover, the dog's going to bite it at some point during the novel.
I've got my own rule: if the book has the word "game" in the title, a kid is going to go through hell.
Just sayin'.
I've got my own rule: if the book has the word "game" in the title, a kid is going to go through hell.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Presidential resumes
So during the Republican primary, I asked myself "how long has it been since a Republican was elected to the highest office in the land without having Vice-President, Governor, or Supreme Allied Commander on his resume?" (Answer: 84 years.)
And that question eventually prompted this chart.
Click to enlarge.
Some notes: Vice-Presidents who assumed the role of the President after the incumbent died/resigned are only present if they went on to win re-election. Therefore Coolidge and LBJ are present; Andrew Johnson and Gerald Ford are not. Also, only the highest office a person held prior to becoming President is listed (ergo Coolidge is only listed under Vice-President, not VP and Governor). "Since 1945" does not include FDR.
One thing I learned from making this chart: Cabinet members (Taft, Hoover, and above all Buchanan) make awful Presidents.
And that question eventually prompted this chart.
Some notes: Vice-Presidents who assumed the role of the President after the incumbent died/resigned are only present if they went on to win re-election. Therefore Coolidge and LBJ are present; Andrew Johnson and Gerald Ford are not. Also, only the highest office a person held prior to becoming President is listed (ergo Coolidge is only listed under Vice-President, not VP and Governor). "Since 1945" does not include FDR.
One thing I learned from making this chart: Cabinet members (Taft, Hoover, and above all Buchanan) make awful Presidents.
How I think the world works
Welcome to a new segment on this blog, "How I Think the World Works," where I post random, slapped-together graphs and charts that are almost certainly factually inaccurate, but nevertheless demonstrate how I think the world works.
And here are the first two.
Note. Not all of these will be politically themed. Click on the pictures for the big version.
And here are the first two.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Oh lookie another Photoplasty contest
Yes, yes, Cracked's readership overlaps with various porn sites by about 110% (I was an English major, so that math adds up to me), and yes, the one immediately after the entry I'm dedicating this post to wins the Grand Prize for Stupidest Photoshop Contest Entry Ever, but number thirteen made me laugh. Because it's so true.
However.
Because I am honor-bound to snark at the embarrassing efforts of Cracked Photoshop Contest entrants, I must point out that the addition of the silver, lightning-spewing mushroom cloud atop the Electoral College very nearly ruins the whole thing for me, in much the same way that the Ewoks almost managed to make Return of the Jedi suck.
However.
Because I am honor-bound to snark at the embarrassing efforts of Cracked Photoshop Contest entrants, I must point out that the addition of the silver, lightning-spewing mushroom cloud atop the Electoral College very nearly ruins the whole thing for me, in much the same way that the Ewoks almost managed to make Return of the Jedi suck.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Pacing Your Arc
First of all, a note to my Facebook friends who are reading this: this post does contain spoilers for Battlestar Galactica (massive spoilers for season 1 and some small details from the other seasons) and Babylon 5 (seasons 1 and 2). Yes, both those shows have been over for years, but as I'm in the process of showing two of you BSG, I thought I'd warn you in advance.
From TvTropes:
Furthermore, both Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica end their first seasons with an assassination attempt that upends the power structure and puts a regular in a coma. Just sayin'.
Now when pointing out the differences between the shows, it's easy to just jump in and go, "oh, B5 was planned out from the start, so it never forced any absurd plot twists on the audience, like Hot Dog abruptly becoming a father," or "BSG doesn't have anyone over-acting from behind a rubber mask." No, I'm going to talk about something different.
Pacing.
Given the above-mentioned similarities between B5's "Chrysalis" and BSG's "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II" (hereafter shortened as "Gleaming"), I thought I'd start with those two episodes and then move out to a comparison of the pacing in the two shows overall.
"Gleaming" ends with Adama being shot, whereas the presidential assassination takes place roughly two-thirds of the way through "Chrysalis." The writers on BSG were going for shock value, whereas JMS was more interested in how the assassination would affect the characters. When we cut back to CIC at the beginning of Season 2, everybody's still frantic because Adama just got shot. You're there, in the moment. In contrast, President Santiago did the big firework 10.5 light-years away. Santiago is not a character on the show. His death is not personal for you, the audience member; you might feel shocked that the Heroes didn't Save The Day, but you're probably empathizing more with the characters on the show. Santiago's like President Adar back in BSG's miniseries. He's like President Kennedy. (A note for young people: President Kennedy's assassination was your parents' 9/11. And while we're on that subject, Roslin's inauguration in the BSG miniseries is not a reference to Clark's inauguration in "Chrysalis." They're both references to LBJ's inauguration in Real Life.)
But go beyond that. The B-plot to "Chrysalis" is Londo Mollari's deal with the devil and the first seeds of next season's Narn-Centauri war. There's a grim sense of inevitability to these proceedings as Mr. Morden snares Londo in his web. In contrast, the B-plot to "Gleaming" (or at least one of them; I'll get to Starbuck's arc later) is Gaius Baltar having the first Opera House Vision. We can make some educated guesses about what "the face of the shape of things to come" is or represents; we know that Caprica-Sharon is pregnant, for example, but we have no idea what Baltar's role will be. Basically what I'm trying to say is that Battlestar was going more for shock value, excitement and mystery, whereas B5 was more about an inexorable slide into darkness.
Now for the overall pacing. Okay, that's not entirely accurate; I'm only halfway through B5's second season. But that's okay because BSG was at its best during its first season-and-a-half, so we'll just work with what we've got. Now, it's true that both shows were great at hiding their Chekhov's Guns. For example, in Battlestar Galactica's "Act of Contrition," the main point of the card game scene is to show that Starbuck is completely caught up in her memories of Zack to function. But that's also the conversation where Boomer learns that Baltar has a Cylon-detector (and then Boomer visits Baltar in a later episode, Head-Six convinces Baltar to lie about the results of his tests... and if you know who the final Cylon is, you know where this is going). Then in "You Can't Go Home Again," Starbuck gets her hands on a Cylon Raider than then sits on Galactica's hangar deck until the end of the season. And then both Boomer's angst about maybe being a Cylon and the Cylon Raider pay really important roles in the season finale. But this starts to not happen from Season 2 on. Yes, there was that mandala in Starbuck's apartment, but that almost feels like something the writers came back to after the fact. The Season 2 finale awkwardly disposed of both the Pegasus copy of Six as well as Baltar's nuke. The two focal episodes of Season 3 were "Unfinished Business," the episode that filled in the "missing year" gap and explained why everyone was suddenly acting differently, and "Maelstrom," which tied off the mandala/Eye of Jupiter thing in an extraordinarily awkward way. Most of the rest of that season (barring the first four and last three episodes) was pointless filler.
Babylon 5 had some pretty awful filler in its first season... except that "Soul Hunter" introduces just how important the Mimbari consider their souls to be (this is, er, incredibly significant later on),"Infection" is the episode that first mentions the war a thousand years ago, the B-plot in "Deathwalker" would have had ramifications down the line if not for one of the show's many cast changes, etc. It's more interesting to spot the threads developing on B5 because they're woven into the backstory. We're not examining the characters' behavior and going "Hmm, is Billy a Cylon?" We're thinking, "okay, Morden came back from the rim, Anna Sheridan died out on the rim, G'Kar was looking for Z'Ha'Dum on the rim, that cryo-freeze ship was reprogrammed to head to Z'Ha'Dum... gee willikers, I think something might be happening out on the rim at Z'Ha'Dum!" (And wouldn't-c'ha-know-it, there's an episode later in Season 2 called "In the Shadow of Z'Ha'Dum"... three guesses what that's about.)
BSG basically operated on short bursts of things happening frantically, separated by long intervals of things not happening. (For a truly excruciating example, watch Season 4.0 the way viewers originally saw it, in weekly installments; "Have we found Earth yet?" "No." "Do we know who the final Cylon is yet?" "Not unless it really is Starbuck." "Do we know what the deal is with Starbuck yet?" "No." "Do we know what the deal is with the Final Four yet?" "No") In contrast, B5's plot was pretty much always unfolding, slowly, steadily, methodically.
So... knowing the destination makes the journey more enjoyable?
From TvTropes:
- Babylon 5 has slowly seemed less and less innovative as the traits it pioneered or popularized spread among sci-fi shows:
- It was the first major sci-fi show, not counting anime, to have major long-term story arcs planned in advance. Babylon 5 was written from a full outline for all five seasons, nearly unheard of at the time.
- It was the first sci-fi series (and one of the first, if not the first, series of any genre) to be filmed in widescreen.
- It gave the Darker and Edgier future and Used Future, in contradiction to Star Trek's utopia, a heavy boost of popularity (though it was nowhere near first with these).
- It intentionally avoided (former trope) "Cute Kids And Robots." In fact, the term was coined in reference to B5 in order to describe what J. Michael Straczynski was declaring war on within TV sci-fi.
- It pioneered the use of CGI effects, especially for anything involving spaceships. To put it in perspective: the producers of Deep Space Nine scoffed at B5's CGI and proudly announced that they would continue to use models; when Voyager launched, it not only used CGI, but used the same production house as B5 to make it.
Furthermore, both Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica end their first seasons with an assassination attempt that upends the power structure and puts a regular in a coma. Just sayin'.
Now when pointing out the differences between the shows, it's easy to just jump in and go, "oh, B5 was planned out from the start, so it never forced any absurd plot twists on the audience, like Hot Dog abruptly becoming a father," or "BSG doesn't have anyone over-acting from behind a rubber mask." No, I'm going to talk about something different.
Pacing.
Given the above-mentioned similarities between B5's "Chrysalis" and BSG's "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II" (hereafter shortened as "Gleaming"), I thought I'd start with those two episodes and then move out to a comparison of the pacing in the two shows overall.
"Gleaming" ends with Adama being shot, whereas the presidential assassination takes place roughly two-thirds of the way through "Chrysalis." The writers on BSG were going for shock value, whereas JMS was more interested in how the assassination would affect the characters. When we cut back to CIC at the beginning of Season 2, everybody's still frantic because Adama just got shot. You're there, in the moment. In contrast, President Santiago did the big firework 10.5 light-years away. Santiago is not a character on the show. His death is not personal for you, the audience member; you might feel shocked that the Heroes didn't Save The Day, but you're probably empathizing more with the characters on the show. Santiago's like President Adar back in BSG's miniseries. He's like President Kennedy. (A note for young people: President Kennedy's assassination was your parents' 9/11. And while we're on that subject, Roslin's inauguration in the BSG miniseries is not a reference to Clark's inauguration in "Chrysalis." They're both references to LBJ's inauguration in Real Life.)
But go beyond that. The B-plot to "Chrysalis" is Londo Mollari's deal with the devil and the first seeds of next season's Narn-Centauri war. There's a grim sense of inevitability to these proceedings as Mr. Morden snares Londo in his web. In contrast, the B-plot to "Gleaming" (or at least one of them; I'll get to Starbuck's arc later) is Gaius Baltar having the first Opera House Vision. We can make some educated guesses about what "the face of the shape of things to come" is or represents; we know that Caprica-Sharon is pregnant, for example, but we have no idea what Baltar's role will be. Basically what I'm trying to say is that Battlestar was going more for shock value, excitement and mystery, whereas B5 was more about an inexorable slide into darkness.
Now for the overall pacing. Okay, that's not entirely accurate; I'm only halfway through B5's second season. But that's okay because BSG was at its best during its first season-and-a-half, so we'll just work with what we've got. Now, it's true that both shows were great at hiding their Chekhov's Guns. For example, in Battlestar Galactica's "Act of Contrition," the main point of the card game scene is to show that Starbuck is completely caught up in her memories of Zack to function. But that's also the conversation where Boomer learns that Baltar has a Cylon-detector (and then Boomer visits Baltar in a later episode, Head-Six convinces Baltar to lie about the results of his tests... and if you know who the final Cylon is, you know where this is going). Then in "You Can't Go Home Again," Starbuck gets her hands on a Cylon Raider than then sits on Galactica's hangar deck until the end of the season. And then both Boomer's angst about maybe being a Cylon and the Cylon Raider pay really important roles in the season finale. But this starts to not happen from Season 2 on. Yes, there was that mandala in Starbuck's apartment, but that almost feels like something the writers came back to after the fact. The Season 2 finale awkwardly disposed of both the Pegasus copy of Six as well as Baltar's nuke. The two focal episodes of Season 3 were "Unfinished Business," the episode that filled in the "missing year" gap and explained why everyone was suddenly acting differently, and "Maelstrom," which tied off the mandala/Eye of Jupiter thing in an extraordinarily awkward way. Most of the rest of that season (barring the first four and last three episodes) was pointless filler.
Babylon 5 had some pretty awful filler in its first season... except that "Soul Hunter" introduces just how important the Mimbari consider their souls to be (this is, er, incredibly significant later on),"Infection" is the episode that first mentions the war a thousand years ago, the B-plot in "Deathwalker" would have had ramifications down the line if not for one of the show's many cast changes, etc. It's more interesting to spot the threads developing on B5 because they're woven into the backstory. We're not examining the characters' behavior and going "Hmm, is Billy a Cylon?" We're thinking, "okay, Morden came back from the rim, Anna Sheridan died out on the rim, G'Kar was looking for Z'Ha'Dum on the rim, that cryo-freeze ship was reprogrammed to head to Z'Ha'Dum... gee willikers, I think something might be happening out on the rim at Z'Ha'Dum!" (And wouldn't-c'ha-know-it, there's an episode later in Season 2 called "In the Shadow of Z'Ha'Dum"... three guesses what that's about.)
BSG basically operated on short bursts of things happening frantically, separated by long intervals of things not happening. (For a truly excruciating example, watch Season 4.0 the way viewers originally saw it, in weekly installments; "Have we found Earth yet?" "No." "Do we know who the final Cylon is yet?" "Not unless it really is Starbuck." "Do we know what the deal is with Starbuck yet?" "No." "Do we know what the deal is with the Final Four yet?" "No") In contrast, B5's plot was pretty much always unfolding, slowly, steadily, methodically.
So... knowing the destination makes the journey more enjoyable?
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Tonight's debate drinking game
Yeah yeah, go to the other blog for real political stuff. This one's not serious:
Drink when any of the following things are mentioned (if the question does not pertain to it, but the candidate brings it up in his answer anyway):
Bain Capital
ObamaCare
Solyndra
The Same Failed Policies That Got Us Into This Mess
47%
Libya
Outsourcing
The difference between outsourcing and offshoring
My Opponent's Tax Returns
Paul Ryan's budget
The Senate's (lack of a) budget
Small businesses
The Middle Class
Pay Your Fair Share
Balanced Approach
Big Bird
Any Republican president
(drink twice if Obama mentions Bush or Romney mentions Reagan)
Bipartisanship
Operation Fast and Furious
The Constitution
You Said We'd Be At 5.6% Unemployment Now If We Passed the Stimulus
Also drink if:
Romney mentions that Obama had four years to fix the economy
Obama claims the Republicans stopped him
Romney claims that half of all recent college graduates are living with their parents
Obama claims Social Security/Medicare is/are fiscally sound
The candidates start arguing about the merits of a study of one of their budget proposals
Obama claims he can balance the budget without raising taxes on the middle class
Either candidate spends more than ten seconds saying how happy they are to be here
Either candidate is asked a question along the lines of "how will you get me back to work?"
Drink when any of the following things are mentioned (if the question does not pertain to it, but the candidate brings it up in his answer anyway):
Bain Capital
ObamaCare
Solyndra
The Same Failed Policies That Got Us Into This Mess
47%
Libya
Outsourcing
The difference between outsourcing and offshoring
My Opponent's Tax Returns
Paul Ryan's budget
The Senate's (lack of a) budget
Small businesses
The Middle Class
Pay Your Fair Share
Balanced Approach
Big Bird
Any Republican president
(drink twice if Obama mentions Bush or Romney mentions Reagan)
Bipartisanship
Operation Fast and Furious
The Constitution
You Said We'd Be At 5.6% Unemployment Now If We Passed the Stimulus
Also drink if:
Romney mentions that Obama had four years to fix the economy
Obama claims the Republicans stopped him
Romney claims that half of all recent college graduates are living with their parents
Obama claims Social Security/Medicare is/are fiscally sound
The candidates start arguing about the merits of a study of one of their budget proposals
Obama claims he can balance the budget without raising taxes on the middle class
Either candidate spends more than ten seconds saying how happy they are to be here
Either candidate is asked a question along the lines of "how will you get me back to work?"
Monday, October 15, 2012
And now a word about plot twists
There are, broadly speaking, two ways of going about The Reveal. You can either have it come out of bat-frak nowhere, or you can slowly put little tiny clues throughout the story for the attentive audience member to piece together. I prefer the latter approach, myself, but the two most famous reveals in history are both examples of the former.
(This is my way of telling you that you owe it to yourself to see The Prestige if you haven't already. If you have already, see it again.)
(This is my way of telling you that you owe it to yourself to see The Prestige if you haven't already. If you have already, see it again.)
So there I am, playing Dragon Age: Origins
And this happens:
Damn it, BioWare, I've already had my share of obnoxious ghost children!
(Yes, my rogue is using a sword-and-dagger combo. This is before I learned how that was a no-no.)
Damn it, BioWare, I've already had my share of obnoxious ghost children!
(Yes, my rogue is using a sword-and-dagger combo. This is before I learned how that was a no-no.)
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Y'know
Sometimes we let the political stuff distract us from what's really important. So while my alter ego launches a gazillion tweets related to the Ryan/Biden debate, here's a question for us internet nerds:
Gravity gun vs Portal gun?
Gravity gun vs Portal gun?
The most idiotic photoshop contest Cracked has ever done
Is available here, and by God it is terrible.
Let's start with just the basic concept. Mundane photos. Not famous photos, works of art, scenes from films, etc. Nothing where we'd be expected to know the original. No, the entire joke here is something "creepy" is just flung into a random, low-resolution photo of what-the-frak-ever. I'll highlight some of my favorites.
#24: A clown in a mirror. Because clowns are creepy, I guess. If this were the only "little girl stalked by horror movie cliche" picture in this competition, I'd probably let it slide. But it's not, dear reader. No, it's not.
#23: A fish with hands. That's creepy?
#22: Death is chillin' in the background watching a bungee jumper jump. This guy got the "easter egg" thing right, because it took me a while to notice it. Whether a blurry guy in a robe with a blurry scythe is actually creepy or not is something I'll let you judge.
#21: One of the only decent entries in this entire list.
#20: I applaud the guy's photoshop skills. Reflections can't be easy to fake. But... this is a mundane photo? Really?
#19: I genuinely do not know what I'm supposed to be looking at here. It looks like something is wrong with the kid's right hand, but I have no idea what it's supposed to be because... oh. My bad. The easter egg is on the bottom right of the frame. But seriously, look at that kid's hands!
#18: I get it. But the image quality is so poor it looks like everything was photoshopped.
#17: See #24.
#16: I had to look in the comments to figure this one out. That's how frakking stupid and not-creepy it is.
#15: See #21.
#14: I'm at a total loss. I mean, the last time the Weeping Angels were scary was 2007. (Disclaimer: unless "The Angels Take Manhattan" was actually good. I haven't seen it yet.)
#13: Look another monster clown. The horror. The horror.
#12: Thank you Cracked. Finally one where the photoshop is so bad it's immediately obvious, and kinda creepy to boot.
#11: Decent.
#10: See, you cleverly hid a perfectly crisp hanged man in the blurry portion of the picture. Illusion ruined. (Why the sodding hell would you use a blurry picture in the first frakking place? See also #19.)
#s 9-7: Okay, I guess.
#6: What... the... hell?
#s 5, 4: Okay, I guess.
#3: I... I have no comment.
#2: GODWIN'S LAW!
#1: What the hell is that splotch of red? Seriously, #21 was creepier than this one.
So thanks, Cracked. Now never do it again.
Let's start with just the basic concept. Mundane photos. Not famous photos, works of art, scenes from films, etc. Nothing where we'd be expected to know the original. No, the entire joke here is something "creepy" is just flung into a random, low-resolution photo of what-the-frak-ever. I'll highlight some of my favorites.
#24: A clown in a mirror. Because clowns are creepy, I guess. If this were the only "little girl stalked by horror movie cliche" picture in this competition, I'd probably let it slide. But it's not, dear reader. No, it's not.
#23: A fish with hands. That's creepy?
#22: Death is chillin' in the background watching a bungee jumper jump. This guy got the "easter egg" thing right, because it took me a while to notice it. Whether a blurry guy in a robe with a blurry scythe is actually creepy or not is something I'll let you judge.
#21: One of the only decent entries in this entire list.
#20: I applaud the guy's photoshop skills. Reflections can't be easy to fake. But... this is a mundane photo? Really?
#19: I genuinely do not know what I'm supposed to be looking at here. It looks like something is wrong with the kid's right hand, but I have no idea what it's supposed to be because... oh. My bad. The easter egg is on the bottom right of the frame. But seriously, look at that kid's hands!
#18: I get it. But the image quality is so poor it looks like everything was photoshopped.
#17: See #24.
#16: I had to look in the comments to figure this one out. That's how frakking stupid and not-creepy it is.
#15: See #21.
#14: I'm at a total loss. I mean, the last time the Weeping Angels were scary was 2007. (Disclaimer: unless "The Angels Take Manhattan" was actually good. I haven't seen it yet.)
#13: Look another monster clown. The horror. The horror.
#12: Thank you Cracked. Finally one where the photoshop is so bad it's immediately obvious, and kinda creepy to boot.
#11: Decent.
#10: See, you cleverly hid a perfectly crisp hanged man in the blurry portion of the picture. Illusion ruined. (Why the sodding hell would you use a blurry picture in the first frakking place? See also #19.)
#s 9-7: Okay, I guess.
#6: What... the... hell?
#s 5, 4: Okay, I guess.
#3: I... I have no comment.
#2: GODWIN'S LAW!
#1: What the hell is that splotch of red? Seriously, #21 was creepier than this one.
So thanks, Cracked. Now never do it again.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Hmmm
So the internet has clued me in to the fact that Sovereign's theme from Mass Effect is pretty much the theme from Dune...
...but watching a certain something else has clued me in to this one. Am I the only one hearing this?
...but watching a certain something else has clued me in to this one. Am I the only one hearing this?
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Signs and Portents, part 1
Okay, so as you know, I've started watching Babylon 5 finally. And as you may know, that is an extraordinarily arc-driven show. All of about five episodes into the show I found myself scoffing at the quality of the filler episodes realized that a standard episode review in the style of, say, my Doctor Who reviews would be completely lunatic.
So I've already done episode 1, "Midnight on the Firing Line" and episode 3, "Born to the Purple," and the only important thing you need to know about episode 2, "Soul Hunter" is that we find out that Delenn is... important, somehow. So this blog post is going to cover the season from episode 4, "Infection," through episode 10, "Believers."
Okay, the other thing you need to know about "Soul Hunter" is that we introduced Dr. Franklin there. "Infection" is his first focus episode. It's Star Trek on a space station. Sorry, but that's what it is. Franklin's less... annoying here (another reason I skipped the "Soul Hunter" review was because doing it would mean having to comment extensively on how awful my first impression of the character was), maybe because the actor found his footing, or maybe because the writers decided to give him a proper character for his episode. Not a lot actually happens, and the episode is largely skippable, although it does tell us that a) Sinclair seems to have a death wish, and b) there are pro-human hate groups popping up.
"Parliament of Dreams" introduces Catherine Sakai, Sinclair's... "old flame" is probably not accurate. "Periodic bedmate" understates the genuine feelings they have for each other. It's also got a bizarre revenge/assassination plot against G'Kar that's ultimately thwarted by his new assistant, and they get to lighten the mood considerably in their last scene with the assassin. Neither one of these could accurately be called the "A-plot" of the episode, given that this is the first time we see G'Kar in a sympathetic light, and the Sinclair/Sakai stuff is too brief. That said, neither of these is the "C-plot," which involves a religious celebration festival, to showcase the beliefs of each species. And once again, humans are the only ones with multiple different religious systems.
"Mind War" introduces mind-readingNazi Pavel Chekov Bester and is a Talia Winters episode. The Psi Corps are, well, a more realistic, darker version of the Jedi. They have supernatural abilities, answer to pretty much no-one, and are immensely secretive. Talia gets a psychic boost at the end which has yet to pay off by the end of the season, and Sakai finds a) a monster alien ship, and b) that G'Kar is not entirely a selfish prick. This is also the episode where Garibaldi finally gets elbowed in the stomach because his brain can't stop hitting on Talia.
"The War Prayer" isn't focused on any one character specifically. While Ivanova probably has the most important role, Londo's side-plot contains the episode's best moments. Those pro-human hate groups I mentioned earlier are looking for a foothold on the station, using Ivanova's old flame as their spokesman. Meanwhile, Londo softens up and gets two of Vir's friends out of their arranged marriages to other people. Because he has forgotten how to dance. No, it's not a euphemism, Doctor Who fans. Just watch it yourself; it's the best standalone episode in the first half of the season.
In "And the Sky Full of Stars," Sinclair gets subject to a mind probe (I'll wait, Doctor Who fans) by a guy who was absent the day they taught subtlety in acting school. Which is a shame because this is a supremely important episode. The Earth-Mimbari war ended because Delenn found something out about Sinclair. This further confirms that Delenn is crazy important. Oh, and she's been ordered to kill Sinclair if he ever remembers... what he just remembered.
"Deathwalker" sees a pair of plot devices that have been done to death a gazillion times (although admittedly, most of the examples I can think of come from after this episode aired, so it might have been more original then): War criminal scientists, and medical vampirism. A war criminal scientist has found the cure for immortality, but it involves draining the life force from other people. Any sort of moral debate is quashed by Kosh blowing her ship up, but evidently the idea of transferring life-force from one person to another stuck with the writers; see the end of this season. Oh, and Kosh scanned Talia's mind for some reason. Still waiting to see what comes of that.
"Believers" is a) a Franklin episode, and b) a "religion versus medicine" episode. The first part isn't as bad as I'd feared, since the actor and writers have the character down pat now, and he's allowed to show a wider range of emotion. The second part is fairly grating. Offscreen, Ivanova pwns an entire squadron of raiders. I'd be lying if I said anything arc-centric happened in this episode.
I'm going to stop there because the next one is a rather complicated Garibaldi episode, and I've got a lot to say about the two after that. Until next time.
So I've already done episode 1, "Midnight on the Firing Line" and episode 3, "Born to the Purple," and the only important thing you need to know about episode 2, "Soul Hunter" is that we find out that Delenn is... important, somehow. So this blog post is going to cover the season from episode 4, "Infection," through episode 10, "Believers."
Okay, the other thing you need to know about "Soul Hunter" is that we introduced Dr. Franklin there. "Infection" is his first focus episode. It's Star Trek on a space station. Sorry, but that's what it is. Franklin's less... annoying here (another reason I skipped the "Soul Hunter" review was because doing it would mean having to comment extensively on how awful my first impression of the character was), maybe because the actor found his footing, or maybe because the writers decided to give him a proper character for his episode. Not a lot actually happens, and the episode is largely skippable, although it does tell us that a) Sinclair seems to have a death wish, and b) there are pro-human hate groups popping up.
"Parliament of Dreams" introduces Catherine Sakai, Sinclair's... "old flame" is probably not accurate. "Periodic bedmate" understates the genuine feelings they have for each other. It's also got a bizarre revenge/assassination plot against G'Kar that's ultimately thwarted by his new assistant, and they get to lighten the mood considerably in their last scene with the assassin. Neither one of these could accurately be called the "A-plot" of the episode, given that this is the first time we see G'Kar in a sympathetic light, and the Sinclair/Sakai stuff is too brief. That said, neither of these is the "C-plot," which involves a religious celebration festival, to showcase the beliefs of each species. And once again, humans are the only ones with multiple different religious systems.
"Mind War" introduces mind-reading
"The War Prayer" isn't focused on any one character specifically. While Ivanova probably has the most important role, Londo's side-plot contains the episode's best moments. Those pro-human hate groups I mentioned earlier are looking for a foothold on the station, using Ivanova's old flame as their spokesman. Meanwhile, Londo softens up and gets two of Vir's friends out of their arranged marriages to other people. Because he has forgotten how to dance. No, it's not a euphemism, Doctor Who fans. Just watch it yourself; it's the best standalone episode in the first half of the season.
In "And the Sky Full of Stars," Sinclair gets subject to a mind probe (I'll wait, Doctor Who fans) by a guy who was absent the day they taught subtlety in acting school. Which is a shame because this is a supremely important episode. The Earth-Mimbari war ended because Delenn found something out about Sinclair. This further confirms that Delenn is crazy important. Oh, and she's been ordered to kill Sinclair if he ever remembers... what he just remembered.
"Deathwalker" sees a pair of plot devices that have been done to death a gazillion times (although admittedly, most of the examples I can think of come from after this episode aired, so it might have been more original then): War criminal scientists, and medical vampirism. A war criminal scientist has found the cure for immortality, but it involves draining the life force from other people. Any sort of moral debate is quashed by Kosh blowing her ship up, but evidently the idea of transferring life-force from one person to another stuck with the writers; see the end of this season. Oh, and Kosh scanned Talia's mind for some reason. Still waiting to see what comes of that.
"Believers" is a) a Franklin episode, and b) a "religion versus medicine" episode. The first part isn't as bad as I'd feared, since the actor and writers have the character down pat now, and he's allowed to show a wider range of emotion. The second part is fairly grating. Offscreen, Ivanova pwns an entire squadron of raiders. I'd be lying if I said anything arc-centric happened in this episode.
I'm going to stop there because the next one is a rather complicated Garibaldi episode, and I've got a lot to say about the two after that. Until next time.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Random Confessions
Mass Effect
I was annoyed that Shepard has to argue with Zaeed when he sets the refinery on fire. My Shepard let Kate Bowman die under nearly identical circumstances; he's not about to give a fig about some refinery workers.
After the Thessia mission, it's impossible for me to like any of the asari. The asari in general because they kept that beacon a secret, and Liara because she won't shut up about the Banshees. Hey, tentacle-head, Shepard's had to deal with human zombies for three freakin' years now! Get over it!
Was I the only person who was confused as to why Shepard was locked up while Jack was made a freaking teacher between Mass Effect 2 and 3?
Dragon Age: Origins
The more I learn about the Chantry the more I'm convinced it's an oppressive dictatorship that needs to be put down. I'm mildly religious and I feel this way, so it kind of baffles me that other people don't.
I gave my female Warden Dalish armor. I keep telling myself that it's for the dexterity bonuses, not the limited coverage. I don't believe me yet.
"Broken Circle" from Dragon Age: Origins was recycled as "Ardat-Yakshi Monastery" in Mass Effect 3. Just sayin'.
And then there's the voice acting, which has led to Zaeed Massani (Experienced Male Warden) hitting on Matriarch Aethyta (Morrigan). That is... special.
I have never wanted to slit a video game character's throat within two seconds of meeting them... until I met Cullen. His introduction starts out exactly the same way as Liara's (trapped in a forcefield, thinking you're a hallucination)... and then he starts ranting about killing everyone who's different. If I could have left that Hitler Youth wannabe in his forcefield for the rest of the game, I bloody well would have.
It took me a while to realize that Isolde wasn't married to Teagan. Because they are totally boinking each other.
Immediately before I quit for the night, I found a tier 7 bow when most of the item drops are in the 3-4 range. It's like the game is teasing me to continue.
My female Warden was romancing Alistair, but after seeing hisNexus fantasy dream in the Fade, she's having second doubts.
Law School
Notre Dame's online class resource thingy is called Sakai. I find this funnier than a Babylon 5 fan should.
Today in the 7th Circuit oral arguments, Judge Posner looked about as tired as I felt.
Judge Sykes reminds me of Laura Roslin.
The liberals on the Supreme Court could learn a thing or two about epic rants from Justice Scalia. Of course, the liberals on the Supreme Court could also learn a thing or two about the Constitution from Justice Scalia.
I was annoyed that Shepard has to argue with Zaeed when he sets the refinery on fire. My Shepard let Kate Bowman die under nearly identical circumstances; he's not about to give a fig about some refinery workers.
After the Thessia mission, it's impossible for me to like any of the asari. The asari in general because they kept that beacon a secret, and Liara because she won't shut up about the Banshees. Hey, tentacle-head, Shepard's had to deal with human zombies for three freakin' years now! Get over it!
Was I the only person who was confused as to why Shepard was locked up while Jack was made a freaking teacher between Mass Effect 2 and 3?
Dragon Age: Origins
The more I learn about the Chantry the more I'm convinced it's an oppressive dictatorship that needs to be put down. I'm mildly religious and I feel this way, so it kind of baffles me that other people don't. I gave my female Warden Dalish armor. I keep telling myself that it's for the dexterity bonuses, not the limited coverage. I don't believe me yet.
"Broken Circle" from Dragon Age: Origins was recycled as "Ardat-Yakshi Monastery" in Mass Effect 3. Just sayin'.
And then there's the voice acting, which has led to Zaeed Massani (Experienced Male Warden) hitting on Matriarch Aethyta (Morrigan). That is... special.
I have never wanted to slit a video game character's throat within two seconds of meeting them... until I met Cullen. His introduction starts out exactly the same way as Liara's (trapped in a forcefield, thinking you're a hallucination)... and then he starts ranting about killing everyone who's different. If I could have left that Hitler Youth wannabe in his forcefield for the rest of the game, I bloody well would have.
It took me a while to realize that Isolde wasn't married to Teagan. Because they are totally boinking each other.
Immediately before I quit for the night, I found a tier 7 bow when most of the item drops are in the 3-4 range. It's like the game is teasing me to continue.
My female Warden was romancing Alistair, but after seeing his
Notre Dame's online class resource thingy is called Sakai. I find this funnier than a Babylon 5 fan should.
Today in the 7th Circuit oral arguments, Judge Posner looked about as tired as I felt.
Judge Sykes reminds me of Laura Roslin.
The liberals on the Supreme Court could learn a thing or two about epic rants from Justice Scalia. Of course, the liberals on the Supreme Court could also learn a thing or two about the Constitution from Justice Scalia.
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