Sententia 3.0

The Official Handbook As You've Never Seen It Before

2011-01-07T08:48:00.000-08:00

The magnificient kazekage has recently completed an absolutely brilliant takedown of Marvel's Official Handbook circa 1980-something-or-other.

THRILL! To the Hulk trying to explain the nature of Ronan the Accuser's "Universal Weapon"!

GASP! At the risque description of Captain America's motorcycle!

LOL! At haikus revealing the hidden link between Karnak and Johnny Carson!

"But Diana," you ask, "how much does such an amazing package cost?"

Well, friends, you're in luck! Act now and you can read the Whole Damn Thing here for the low, low cost of $0.00! You can't beat those prices! Not even with Ronan's Universal Weapon!

Brand New Brand New Day

2011-01-04T11:41:00.000-08:00

There's really only one appropriate response to this:

Game Review: Dragon Age - Origins (Part 1)

2010-12-26T05:10:00.000-08:00

Note: This review has grown to the point where I've decided to split it. Part 1 is Introduction/Setting

Well. It seems my plans to resume a more regular review schedule have been utterly derailed, as I spent November and some of December in an intense playthrough of BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins.

Make that two playthroughs, actually.

So... where do I begin?

I actually had "Dragon Age" installed on my PC about six months ago; I'd put off playing it because I couldn't risk distractions during the concluding phase of my graduate project. But BioWare games have intrigued me for quite some time, specifically RPGs such as "Knights of the Old Republic", "Mass Effect" and "Dragon Age" where the player's ability to determine various courses of action supposedly leads to a more immersive role-playing experience.

In fact, one thing I enjoy about these "Western" RPGs is that, in theory, I'm able to formulate my character before starting the game: if I want to play the part of an honorable hero or a self-serving prat (or something else altogether), I can make those choices consistently throughout the game and emerge with a coherent character arc. It all depends on the extent to which the game world and the plot accomodate my decisions.

My first experience with a BioWare game didn't quite produce the desired result. I saw "Knights of the Old Republic" as a way to resolve an old beef I have with the "Star Wars" franchise: my player character would be a powerful, intelligent female villain. The Anti-Daala, as it were.

Unfortunately, being a "Star Wars" game, choices in "Knights of the Old Republic" are largely based on a simplistic moral binary: you're either roleplaying the Jedi equivalent of Mother Theresa or the Sith equivalent of Jeffrey Dahmer. And the game practically requires you to embrace one extremity or another, since the efficiency of talents such as Force Lightning and Healing are directly proportionate to your position on the Light Side/Dark Side scale. As a result, playing a villainous character meant making truly despicable decisions - appropriate for the cartoonish Emperor, perhaps, but not for the type of character I wanted to play.

"Dragon Age: Origins" is a much more subtle and flexible creature. I should note that I'm doing a great injustice to a very complex and intricate story by summarizing, but for brevity's sake it goes something like this: the kingdom of Ferelden is on the brink of destruction following a disastrous defeat at the hands of the vile darkspawn. You and another survivor are the last remnants of the fabled Grey Wardens, and you are tasked with assembling a new army and stopping the darkspawn incursion before they devour the entire realm. Naturally, every possible source of aid is currently neck-deep in its own troubles: the forest-dwelling Dalish Elves are under constant attack by a mysterious clan of werewolves, demons have overrun the Circle of Magi, the dwarves are a breath away from civil war and the human knights of Redcliffe have scattered across the land seeking a mystical cure for their dying leader.

Broadly speaking, that's all par for the course with RPGs: you have to solve other people's problems before they'll help you. But what's truly great about this game is that there are multiple solutions to the major quests, and unlike "Knights of the Old Republic" these options aren't based on morality per se, but rather a sort of cynical pragmatism versus idealism. For example, after a long trek through the underground ruins of the dwarven empire, you discover the Anvil of the Void, an ancient artifact capable of forging powerful golems. The Anvil's creator begs you to destroy it, as it requires a constant stream of living sacrifices to do its work. What's more, you may have a golem in your party that has described to you, in vivid detail, what basically amounts to an eternity of servitude. On the other hand, preserving the Anvil means the golems' raw might will benefit both you and the long-term survival of the dwarves. There may very well be a moral component at work, but it's not at the heart of the dilemmas you face.

Exploring Ferelden (and, by extension, the world of Thedas) was something of a marvel to me, as it's a world that defies the preconception of fantasy as simplistic literature. Unlike Middle-Earth or its derivatives, the existence of evil is treated more like an incurable disease than a tangible threat: the darkspawn and their corrosive Blight are beaten back again and again, but can never truly be eradicated. Ethereal demons from the dreamlike Fade can possess anyone with the slightest magical inclination, at any time, for any purpose. And there is no traditional solution to any of these problems, no keystone that instantly results in the enemy's destruction. This lends much credibility to the moral ambiguity permeating every aspect of the storyline: the thought of executing innocent mages should seem absolutely reprehensible, until you realize that there are no preventative measures that can be taken against possession. And since mages are arguably the most powerful class, both in story and game terms, the possibility of wiping them out "just to be safe" isn't something that can be set aside so easily. But is their current situation - a lifetime of virtual imprisonment within the Tower, under constant guard by the templars - any better? There are no easy or "right" answers, which ultimately means that the player's choices really count.

Ferelden's rich history is communicated to the player primarily through various Codex entries scattered across the world. Even the apocryphal material makes for pleasant reading, though some pieces of information (ie: the more detailed summary of Andraste's crusade and her death, or the profile on high dragons) can prove unexpectedly vital. You can certainly understand the plight of the elves better if you learn what really happened to them, and one of the major villains in the game becomes somewhat sympathetic in light of what the Codex reveals about his past. It's not an ideal scenario, since you're not likely to pause the game in the middle of a fight to read five paragraphs about the creature trying to crack your skull open, but it's far superior to twenty-minute infodump cutscenes.

The player is actually able to experience a part of the world before the story properly begins: character creation includes a choice of five possible backgrounds, depending on race/class. These serve as "prologues" to the main narrative, and are set in various regions across Ferelden, some of which you'll revisit during the major quests. Aside from informing how your character is perceived by others (a human noble is treated differently than a city elf or a dwarf commoner), these prologues also help root your character within the setting. You'll recognize NPCs who participated in your first adventure, who may have even fought at your side. While the world itself isn't much changed by your decisions, you may still find yourself more emotionally invested and immersed in the game. It's a clever device, and it works well enough that you'll probably find yourself creating new characters just for the different initial scenarios.

It's also worth noting that various DLCs add new locations and sub-stories, most of which are seamlessly integrated into the overall narrative, but I'll be reviewing those in a different segment.

Ultimately, I think what I most appreciate about the world of "Dragon Age: Origins" is that it actively resists many of the tropes and conventions that have become overly familiar and stale. The foundations are the same: humans and elves and dwarves learn to set aside their differences and unite against a common enemy, one that just happens to be a faceless horde of monsters. But once you're drawn in, the subversions become more and more evident, and what you're left with is an incredibly compelling world that breaks the right rules and upholds others.

Thedas: a great place to visit. But you wouldn't want to live there. Seriously. Everything wants you dead. Yes, even that. Especially that.

Next segment: Characters/Gameplay

Postcard From Thedas

2010-10-31T11:26:00.001-07:00

Playing "Dragon Age: Origins".

Much to say.

Can't stop long enough to write.

Later.

And apropos of "Mad Men"...

2010-10-10T01:01:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I could swear that CollegeHumor is reading my mind...

Diana's Adventures in TV Land: Mad Men

2010-10-09T07:01:00.000-07:00

This one's been on the to-do list for a while now: the show everyone's talking about, the show kazekage has been urging me to watch for months - and that counts for a lot, given how much I enjoyed the last series he recommended (Gargoyles).

So, just to start things off properly: sorry, love. Couldn't make it past six episodes.

I give the creators of "Mad Men" due praise for their recreation of 1960's New York: every detail radiates authenticity, even though I'm sure some liberties have been taken in terms of historical accuracy. And, as predicted, I've developed a major crush on Jon Hamm.

(Take note, CW bleach-babies - this is what a real man looks like!)

But frankly, my problem with this series has less to do with style and more to do with substance.

I'll preface the following review by admitting that my standards of evaluation aren't what they were a year ago; back then, if a somewhat-flawed series caught my interest, I'd stick around for at least a full season to see if things got better. I'm still watching (and enjoying) "The Vampire Diaries" because it's improved significantly since its initial mediocrity.

Unfortunately, I find myself sitting on a rather intimidating pile of books, movies and games at the moment, all of which I'd like to check out (and possibly review), which means I have considerably less patience for stories that don't hook me after a reasonable amount of time.

So I gave "Mad Men" six episodes. Is that fair? I'd like to think so - six hours is more than enough to present one of the two things I need in order to stay invested in a narrative: interesting characters or an entertaining story. (Years of substandard television have taught me never to expect both at the same time, but to be highly appreciative if they do show up hand-in-hand.)

Part of the problem may be hype backlash - more than any series I'm currently aware of, "Mad Men" has gained near-unanimous praise from critics and viewers alike. And yet, the one word that springs to mind when I try to describe this series is "joyless": taking into account that the whole point seems to be ridding its viewers of any nostalgic idealization of the period, there just isn't any fun to be had here.

It's the story of an ad agency, at a time when advertising was on the cusp of transforming into what it is now. And the entire cast is deeply screwed up, somewhere between Jackie Peyton and Nancy Botwin on the Arkham Asylum Scale of Batshit Lunacy.

Except that with Jackie and Nancy (and Tara Gregson, and Dexter Morgan, and Abed Nadir) there's so much more to the characters than just their idiosyncratic craziness. Dexter has his sardonic narration, Nancy has her equally crazy family and so on. With "Mad Men", there's no getting away from all these unhappy people being unhappy. There's no humor, no adventure, nothing but a sense of gravitas so immense and overwhelming I can practically feel myself being pulled towards the screen. For example: watching Pete squirm in episode 4 probably would've been gratifying if I found Roger or Don to be even mildly likeable. But of course, they're as miserable as everyone else.

On a final note, I don't think this problem has anything at all to do with the writing per se - the dialogue is crisp, story developments make sense, and there's enough characterization to give me a fair-to-decent grasp of the main cast in a relatively short amount of time. It's a well-told story, but that story doesn't appeal to me as a viewer. And while it's entirely possible that the atmosphere becomes a bit more balanced at some later point, I'm not going to drag myself through the depths of abyssal angst to get there.

A Few Words on Comics

2010-10-09T06:37:00.000-07:00

Yes, stop the presses, Diana has something to say about the funnybooks again.

I'm at a point where my monthly reading list is down to almost nothing: I've got Mike Carey's "X-Men: Legacy", "Fables" and "Jack of Fables", and Peter David's "X-Factor", and to be quite honest, I could probably drop the latter three without feeling too badly. It's been a year, almost down to the day, since I quit the Savage Critics out of sheer apathy for the mainstream. I don't even bother with the news websites anymore.

In short, I've lost faith in comics. There was a time, not too long ago, where it seemed like a more mature, sophisticated kind of storytelling was on the rise; talented and unorthodox writers were pulling various properties out of stagnation and telling new, interesting stories. Instead, the past six or seven years have been spent in rapid regression across the board, with Marvel and DC degenerating into a distressingly-warped fraternity mindset that panders not to its audience but to itself. I've seen instances of bad judgment that utterly confound me: Batman pissing himself, Spider-Man selling his wife to Satan, Superman reconnecting with America by walking around, rage kitties, radioactive sperm, costumes with spikes on the inside, and more contrived writer's fiat than the Bible.

The days of "X-Statix", "Runaways" and "Alias" are long gone.

But every once in a while, I get curious and pick up a new miniseries, just to see what's being done. Nine times out of ten I find nothing of interest, but sometimes I catch a real gem like "The Umbrella Academy" or "Iron Man: Noir". It's worth the effort.

This week I picked up the second issue of "Neonomicon", written by Alan Moore.

Now, I have a complicated relationship with the works of Alan Moore. On the one hand, his stories have changed the way I perceive comics - and I'm not just referring to the obvious ones. No, I'm talking about "Miracleman", "The Ballad of Halo Jones", "Top 10" - stories that have nowhere near the level of recognition you'd find for "Watchmen" or "V For Vendetta", but are powerful and brilliant works nevertheless. On the other hand, it's no secret that Moore's apparently gone mad, content to publish lesbian slashfic and utterly impenetrable odes to Victorian literature.

I should also note that "Neonomicon" is published by Avatar, which I'll admit should've set off some warning bells. But still, I thought, it's Alan Moore. Surely he's got something clever up his sleeve - or at the very least, something worth reading.

What I found was a nonsense plot that aims for Lovecraft and hits Uwe Boll, concluding with a horrific gang-rape scene that goes on and on for five pages. It's explicit, it's vile, it's gratuitous, it's something Garth Ennis would've claimed as his own with great beaming pride.

Brought to you by Alan Moore.

The fact that I find myself physically disgusted by the work of a creator I once idolized is rather depressing. The thought that I can no longer distinguish between an Alan Moore story and a Garth Ennis story seems even worse. Like a death knell for... not the glory days per se, but the hope that the glory days could come around again. Instead, the old titans have gone mad and their replacements are puerile twats, and right now, as I desperately struggle to forget this awful, awful book, I can't help but feel like it's just one more justification to be done with the mainstream once and for all.

Andrew Garfield Being Adorable

2010-09-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

Here.

If I had any doubt that he'd be perfect for the role of Peter Parker, I'm quite certain of it now. That smile, that laugh... we're looking at a possible King of All Woobies here!

And how might Tobey Maguire feel, being replaced by a younger, cuter actor?

Well, honestly, Tobey. It was your own damn fault.

This Just In: Water is to H2O...

2010-09-10T01:34:00.001-07:00

... as Carlie Cooper is to Anthony Caine.

Bravo, Mr. Box.

Game Review: Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic

2010-09-09T02:40:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since I've had time to play video games, let alone review them. Fortunately, my summer workload is finally starting to break up, which hopefully means a lot more content starting next month. In the meantime, let's have a look at a game from the "Star Wars" franchise: BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic.

Admittedly, my expectations for this game may have been slightly unrealistic: I've always imagined the distant pre-narrative history of "Star Wars" to be so much grander and more interesting than the "present" of the Lucas films, but what happens in the very first scene of the game? A small Republic transport comes under fire by the warships of the Sith Empire; the last few survivors crash on a fringe planet without hope of rescue; one of them carries a secret which can change the course of the war. Oh, and the Empire has a mysterious superweapon.

It's a rather blatant reiteration of the set-up to the first "Star Wars" film. In itself, this is hardly a major offense - if the idea is to instantly place the player in a familiar context so you can get to the actual story without further delay, that's fair enough. However, the overt similarities don't end there. When the opening scroll mentioned a Sith Empire, I imagined an army where even the grunts could use the Force. Instead, Sith Troopers are basically Stormtroopers with shinier uniforms, and this Empire is ruled by Darth Malak, a Sith Lord whose lower jaw has been cybernetically replaced. More machine than man, perhaps? Hmm.

It may seem strange for me to castigate a game because it strongly resembles its source text... but again, I chose "Knights of the Old Republic" assuming that it would tell a different story within that framework. Instead, it turns out that things haven't changed much in four thousand years.

Theoretically, the player's ability to influence the plot via various choices throughout the game is meant to counteract the overly familiar plot elements. And it could have worked - I've heard enough about "Dragon Age: Origins" and the "Mass Effect" series to know that BioWare has almost perfected that aspect - but in practice, "Knights of the Old Republic" falls short of the ideal. To demonstrate, I'll explain a bit about the character I created and why I ultimately lost interest in the game at a very early stage.

I went into "Knights of the Old Republic" determined to create and roleplay a character neither Lucas nor his successors have ever really provided: a competent, powerful female villain. Someone who wields the Dark Side of the Force without degenerating into a moustache-twirling caricature, and whose evil acts serve a higher purpose than self-indulgence.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Alia Sha'tir:

Bonus points if you can figure out the significance of her anagrammed last name. And yes, those are a pair of lightsabers she's wielding.

So Alia begins as a soldier in the Republic, and pretty soon the game starts offering those morality-based choices to determine where she is on the Light/Dark scale.

Said choices are utterly ridiculous.

My greatest disappointment with "Knights of the Old Republic" is the way in which it takes the Jedi/Sith binaries beyond even the simplistic extremes of Lucas' films: playing a dedicated Dark Side character will force you into courses of actions that are not simply evil, but obnoxious as well. It's one thing to be ruthless in achieving your goals, it's another to act like a prat "for the evulz".

Moreover, your actions will draw constant criticism from your companions - and since their alignments never change, you can either put up with a neverending stream of disbelief and outrage (forgotten as soon as the conversation ends) or play the entire game with characters whose position on the moral scale is closer to yours, and who probably won't be as helpful as a Light Side Jedi who can heal the party.

The most problematic aspect of this particular mechanism, though, is the fact that the game practically requires you to be consistent in your approach. I tend to be more aggressive than defensive in RPGs, which suits a Dark Side character just fine, but abilities such as Force Lightning and Life Drain become more costly and less effective the further you get from the Dark end of the morality scale. So to get the most out of my chosen set of powers, I had to sink to the utter depths of depravity for the first eight hours of the game, at which point I detested Alia so much that I stopped playing.

And more's the pity, really, because from a purely technical standpoint I could have enjoyed "Knights of the Old Republic" - the game allows you to pause during battles and arrange attack patterns and sequences for each party member (adding a bit of tactical thinking to otherwise-straightforward fights), the environment and character designs hold up despite somewhat antiquated graphics (what a difference half a decade makes) and the voice acting is mostly solid, if lacking in real standouts.

But no other video game genre is so dependent on sympathetic protagonists as western RPGs. Twats like Kratos, Prince Arthas and Duke Nukem are tolerable because we control them from a distance, and never really think of them as extensions of our own selves; Western RPGs like "Fallout" or "Knights of the Old Republic", on the other hand, present tabula rasa protagonists whose appearance and personality are determined by the player. And if the end result is a character so reprehensible that the player can't stand her... well, there's something fundamentally wrong with that process, isn't there?

Diana: 1, Dramaddicts: 0

2010-08-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

And now, a personal entry.

I'm rather proud of my conduct today.

A few days ago I was acquainted with someone whose criticism of "Twilight" amused me, who admires Storm - and sees the problems in her current incarnation as Mrs. Black Panther - as I do, and who generally seemed like a nice person. We chatted a bit on his LiveJournal, it was all well and good.

Things took a rather ugly turn this evening, resulting in him attacking me for politely disagreeing with his rather unfortunate generalizations about straight women as authors of gay fiction.

(Cliffnotes version: he believes straight women fetishize gay characters to the point of misrepresenting them - I certainly accept that this is true for specific writers such as Laurell K. Hamilton, whose lack of talent goes hand-in-hand with using the medium to foist her kinks on unsuspecting readers, but I do not agree that it's true of all heterosexual female writers, or even most of them. Because the implication there is that if you're a straight woman you flat-out can't depict a normal gay relationship, and that's exactly the same line of strawman thinking that leads people to believe that if you're a man, you can never create well-rounded female characters - it's a convenient notion that just isn't true.)

After being told in no uncertain terms that as a heterosexual woman I had no right to an opinion on the matter, that I was "privileged" and had to sit down and shut up... well, I apologized for upsetting him and walked away.

And when I did that, I realized that I really have changed.

Six months ago, I might've engaged in a long, tiresome war with this person on his own blog; I'd have taken the accusations of "privilege" and "racism" to heart instead of recognizing them as easy outs when you're losing an argument (because when everyone's "privileged" except you, you automatically win), I'd have gotten upset and the whole thing might've dragged on for days.

Now, though, I just stepped away from the whole mess, quietly took him off the Friends list and let matters lie. Maybe it's just me getting older, but the prospect of an extended fight with this person I barely know doesn't interest me at all. I'm past the point where I need online vindication - and in the history of Internet Drama, I very much doubt that many opinions have actually changed as a result of flame wars.

Unlike your typican Old West town, the Internet actually is big enough for the both of us. So I'll bid him adieu and get on with my own business.

Movie Review: Batman - Under The Red Hood

2010-07-23T01:41:00.000-07:00

There's a rather unfortunate trend going on when it comes to Batman: as the song goes, "can't read his, can't read his, no you can't read his poker face." Whether it's comics or direct-to-DVD animated movies like this latest WB offering, Batman has become a complete and utter cipher in recent years; beyond secretive, beyond unexpressive, beyond stoic. And, in my opinion, this has stripped away the character's most endearing quality: his humanity.

It's certainly true that Batman has never been the kind of superhero who wears his emotions on his sleeve. But what made him so appealing to me was precisely the fact that every now and then, the mask would slip. (Can't find any clips, but basically, any early episode of the Timm/Dini series that featured Two-Face demonstrates this quite nicely.)

That doesn't happen anymore. And "Under The Red Hood" is a perfect example of the result. Spoilers ahoy.

On paper, this should've had an emotional payload that would put "Mask of the Phantasm" or "I Am The Night" to shame. Jason Todd, Batman's second sidekick (and his self-proclaimed "greatest failure") was brutally murdered by the Joker. Five years later, the titular Red Hood emerges to wage war against Gotham crimelord the Black Mask, as well as Batman himself. He's fast, he's smart, and he knows every move Batman makes. A DNA sample just confirms what Bruce already suspects: Jason, his lost Robin, has been resurrected. And he's out for blood.

In terms of straight-up action, this one does quite well for itself, much like the previous "Crisis on Two Earths": the best and most effective scenes are the ones where the Red Hood effortlessly evades Batman's standard attempts to capture him, showing an awareness of the Dark Knight's tactics that's beyond even his oldest enemies.

The voice talent is a bit uneven - I'll admit my difficulties in accepting anyone other than Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as the voices of Batman and Joker, respectively, but Bruce Greenwood acquits himself quite well. John DiMaggio's Joker is quite different - the manic edge is intact, but there's a much darker and threatening undertone to this version, which suits the plot and atmosphere perfectly. I'd say the only real weak link is Jensen Ackles' Red Hood/Jason: he just doesn't reach the emotional high notes that the dialogue demands, especially in that pivotal scene where Jason finally reveals his real motives.

And that actually leads me to the biggest problem with this whole movie: there's no emotional core. The setup is there, and there are some very poignant flashbacks (the very last scene is the only one that moved me, as it really drove home the underlying tragedy of the whole story), but Batman doesn't react - at all - to the impossible return of his surrogate son. He's not horrified, he's not upset, he's not the slightest bit grateful that Jason's back. Even that critical moment where he explains why he didn't "avenge" Jason's death is delivered in the same flat monotone used when analyzing clues at a crime scene.

Bearing in mind that I haven't read the original storyline, I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that that utter lack of emotional response to the situation is something that was drawn from the comics themselves; if that's the case, then more's the pity. The failure of "Under the Red Hood" is that it promises a story that cuts to the heart of Batman the person, rather than just Batman the superhero, and it doesn't deliver any of that. So much more could have been done on that level, and instead we get explosions and shoot-outs and violent physical combat. Exciting, yes... but dramatically satisfying? Not even close.

Triumph

2010-07-22T23:28:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, today is a day of great victory for both geek culture and the human spirit.

Both Ethan and myself were dumbstruck at the news that SDCC attendees organized a counter-protest that chased Fred Phelps and his hate-spewing cult away. No violence, no police intervention, just enough utter conviction in a message that's infinitely more powerful than "God Hates (Insert Victim of the Week Here)".

And you know what instantly popped into my mind when I saw the photos?

This.

So we raise our glasses to you, people of Comic-Con. Well done.

For the bloody WIN

2010-07-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of deadwalrus, on the matter of Joe Quesada's "One Moment in Time":

Wait just one fucking MINUTE now.

Peter missed his wedding because a fat, Hispanic man fell on him, suffocating him, trapping him under his bulk, and restricting his movement?

...Isn't that, like, what happened in real life?

Bravo, good sir. Bravo!

Much Rejoicing in the House of Diana

2010-07-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

Nickelodeon has just announced a sequel series to "Avatar: The Last Airbender".

My reaction was more or less this.

Here's what we know:

The Legend of Korra takes place 70 years after the events of Avatar: The Last Airbender and follows the adventures of the Avatar after Aang – a passionate, rebellious, and fearless teenaged girl from the Southern Water Tribe named Korra. With three of the four elements under her belt (Earth, Water, and Fire), Korra seeks to master the final element, Air. Her quest leads her to the epicenter of the modern "Avatar" world, Republic City – a metropolis that is fueled by steampunk technology. It is a virtual melting pot where benders and non-benders from all nations live and thrive. However, Korra discovers that Republic City is plagued by crime as well as a growing anti-bending revolution that threatens to rip it apart. Under the tutelage of Aang's son, Tenzin, Korra begins her airbending training while dealing with the dangers at large.

Now, the cynical part of my brain was distressingly quick to point out the many ways this can go wrong: what if the creators fail to meet their own standards? What if the network demands that Korra be Chickified? Oh, they were comfortable enough with Katara, Toph and Azula being progressive female characters, but then, they weren't the titular protagonists. What if the future world of the Four Nations is just a faded xerox of the original? What about the loose ends from the original that couldn't be covered in a 70-year gap (ie: Ursa's fate, to name just one example)? And worst of all, what if this new series takes cues from the Shamayawningalready movies?

And yet... and yet. There's something about this that feels right to me, like it could be another "Batman Beyond" in terms of the relationship between the parent and spin-off series; even based on the preliminary information, Korra sounds like a very different protagonist than her predecessor - she's already most of the way through her training, and I'd never use the words "passionate" or "rebellious" to describe Aang. The fact that the world has moved from medieval to steampunk makes a lot of sense given that the War has been over for a century, and the Fire Nation under Zuko presumably shared its technological advancements with the rest of the world. Even the central conflict is different this time: it's not a war story. Maybe it's what comes after a war story. I don't know... and I can't wait to find out!

So I'm going to be optimistic about this. And overjoyed at the possibility of revisiting one of my favorite stories.

Does Whatever a Spider Can

2010-07-01T23:55:00.000-07:00

Andrew Garfield has been chosen to play Spider-Man.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is an excellent choice.

I've mentioned before that Garfield's performance in "Boy A" broke my heart into little pieces; he's the woobie to end all woobies, instantly sympathetic, and "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" shows he's got comic timing as well. And, of course, he's adorable, which certainly helps.

All in all, he's perfect for the role of Peter Parker. And yes, I'm actually going to see it when it comes out, thanks to this bit of news.

Why I'm Skipping "The Last Airbender"

2010-06-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

Much has been made about the controversial "whitewashing" of M. Night Shyamalan's "Avatar: The Last Airbender" film adaptation.

Valid arguments have been made against the casting process and its unfortunate implications, and many have called for boycotts of the film.

However, my reason for sitting out "The Last Airbender" is much simpler, and specific to this particular series:

There's nothing the movie can offer me that the series hasn't already done better.

I usually enjoy adaptations for two reasons. The first has to do with the whole concept of "dream casting" - yes, he was extremely disappointing in the sequels, but for that first "Spider-Man" movie I honestly can't see anyone pulling it off as well as Tobey Maguire. And I wanted to see Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier at least a decade before Bryan Singer, so there's that.

The second reason is more to do with narrative distillation: the best adaptations are the ones that appropriate the source text's best qualities and apply correctives to the flaws. On that note, thank you again, Peter Jackson, for deleting Tom Bombadil from "Lord of the Rings", the book that has more fat than Homer Simpson.

But "Avatar: The Last Airbender" is quite possibly the most meticulously-plotted, well-acted, elaborately-designed, narratively-exquisite series I've ever had the pleasure of watching. There isn't a single thing I'd change, or even want to see differently. I don't need to see a live-action Aang when the animated one was so charming and endearing; I don't need to see a live-action Appa when "Appa's Lost Days" still moves me to tears; I certainly don't need to see some talentless Hollywood tweener fail to fill the shoes of Azula, one of the greatest female villains in the medium's history.

There's nowhere for Shyamalan to go but down - why would I pay money to watch that?

Oh David

2010-06-21T23:34:00.001-07:00

I just saw the 2009 BBC adaptation of "Hamlet" starring Patrick Stewart and David Tennant.

It's one of the best versions I've ever seen.

And there's really no elegant way to say this, so:

David Tennant? Extremely fuckable.

That is all.

Creative? Really?

2010-06-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

This just in: the George W. Bush Award for Most Ridiculous Promotion of a Village Idiot goes to Marvel and its brand-new Chief Creative (pause for snickering) Officer, Joe Quesada. To paraphrase Sheryl Crow, there goes the bloody neighborhood...

Edit: The cast of "Futurama" weighs in.

Diana's Adventures in TV Land: Gargoyles

2010-05-25T10:10:00.001-07:00

Note: This review refers specifically to the first two seasons of "Gargoyles" - since series creator Greg Weisman has taken surprisingly drastic steps to disavow the third season, I might as well do the same.

First, my thanks to kazekage for introducing me to this series.

The basic premise of "Gargoyles" is as follows: a thousand years ago, humans enjoyed a peaceful (if uneasy) relationship with Gargoyles, stone warriors that came to life after sunset and protected their shared homes. In 994 AD, one such home - Castle Wyvern in Scotland - is invaded by a horde of Vikings during the day. The helpless Wyvern Clan is decimated, leaving only six survivors. These survivors, including clan leader Goliath, are then frozen by a magic spell "until the castle rises above the clouds".

A millenium later, "eccentric" millionaire David Xanatos transplants the entire castle, brick by brick, onto the top of his corporate headquarters in Manhattan. The skyscraper's added height puts Castle Wyvern - and its Gargoyle statues - above the cloudline, and when the sun sets Goliath and his clan are released into a very different world.

As might be expected, the first season (13 episodes) deals with the Gargoyles orienting themselves in the modern world: they befriend Eliza Maza, a police officer, and make quite a few enemies as well. Goliath ultimately decides to declare Manhattan the Gargoyles' new home, and dedicates them all to defending the city from criminals and supernatural threats. And plenty of both emerge in the much-lengthier second season (52 episodes).

To better explain why I find "Gargoyles" so impressive, I've put together a little list of Things I Never Thought I'd See in a '90s Disney Cartoon (in no particular order):

1. Blood. Characters don't bleed often, but when they do, it's a significant moment, like Demona clawing Gillecomgain's face (thus giving birth to the endless vendetta of the Hunters) or Broadway accidentally shooting Elisa in the back with her own gun.

2. Character development. For everyone. Take a look at this "group photo" for the Disney Afternoon: "Tale Spin", "Darkwing Duck", "Gummi Bears", "Ducktales" - all amusing series in their own ways, but they all followed very strict status quos. Not so with "Gargoyles": the protagonists evolve, as do most of the antagonists.

2a. Most of the villains have a rather surprising amount of depth and growth. Demona is completely axe-crazy (and how's this for cognitive dissonance: she's voiced by Marina Sirtis, who probably only raised her voice two or three times throughout the entire run of "Star Trek: The Next Generation") but once her backstory is revealed, it's hard not to feel sorry for her, even though she refuses redemption at every opportunity. Xanatos seems to be the Gargoyles' archenemy (and i now understand why it's called the Xanatos Gambit: he's a brilliant Thrawn-level manipulator) but by the end of the second season he becomes a husband and a father, and finds common ground with Goliath (the one Gargoyle who hates him the most). Even Macbeth manages to let go of his hatred during his last appearance.

3. The Gargoyles are frozen in 994 AD and wake up in 1994; the natural assumption is that we're focusing on the present day. For the most part, this is true... until we discover that two storylines unfolded during the interrim, both of which have major ramifications on the present. The "City of Stone" arc flashes back to Demona's life after the fall of Castle Wyvern - a fittingly tragic tale that continues to reverberate throughout the second season. And then, later in the season, we learn what happened to the human Wyvern survivors and the Gargoyles' unhatched eggs. The series makes excellent use of its timeline.

4. Halfway through the second season, Goliath discovers he has a daughter, Angela... and he rejects her. Granted, it's more to do with how Gargoyles view family: children belong to the entire clan, so it doesn't really matter who the biological parents are. But it's still a shocking moment that taints our hero, especially since Angela does see him as her father. Of course, when he finally comes to love and accept Angela as his own, she's injured by the newest incarnations of the Hunter. Skip to 5:10
here and tell me you don't get the chills.

5. Much has been made of the series' surprisingly high number of loans from "Star Trek": Nichelle Nichols, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Kate Mulgrew, Brent Spiner and Michael Dorn all had recurring roles, while others such as Colm Meaney, LeVar Burton and Avery Brooks turned up for guest-spots. So for someone who's even moderately familiar with the Roddenberry franchise, it's pretty much a constant string of "Hey, I know that voice!"

5a. But that tends to overshadow the fact that the rest of the cast were excellent as well, particularly Keith David, John Rhys-Davies, Tim Curry (brr!) and Jeff Bennett, who totally channeled his QFG4 Ad Avis voice for Owen.

6. Various episodes take turns exploring Scottish, Irish, English, Native American, Nordic and Greek mythologies, with a line of dialogue summing it up perfectly: "All legends are true." But it's Shakespeare who gets the most love from the series' writers: Puck, Oberon, Titania, Macbeth and the Weird Sisters are all major players in the mythology, while Coldstone and his companions were apparently once known as Othello, Desdemona and Iago. Shakespeare and Disney - not a partnership I'd have anticipated.

Which isn't to say that "Gargoyles" is entirely without flaws. Pacing is a bit problematic throughout the series: for example, Puck is introduced very early in season 2 and doesn't turn up again for almost forty episodes; nothing much comes of Demona's ability to withstand daylight; the Illuminati are built up as major players but fizzle out towards the end; and the King Arthur subplot is practically an afterthought.

Also, while the World Tour arc had some great out-of-Manhattan adventures, the payoff was surprisingly lacking: almost twenty episodes are used to establish characters such as Cuchulainn, Natsilane, the New Olympians and the Gargoyle clans of England, Guatemala and Japan, but once the dust settles they never appear again. Granted, there were only six episodes left in the season once the World Tour ended, but I kept expecting Goliath's new allies to turn up during the Gathering or the Hunter's Moon - both major crisis points for the Manhattan Clan - and they're not even mentioned. Apparently the World Tour was meant to springboard an entire array of spin-offs, but to my knowledge none of them ever materialized so it all comes off a bit moot.

Time travel is another headache-inducing issue here: the series takes the familiar stance that history has already been written, so whenever Goliath or someone else goes back in time, they only end up doing whatever they were meant to do all along. This becomes especially frustrating once the Archmage makes his comeback, because his future self saves his past self from death and tells him he knew how to do it because his future self told him, etc. It all gets a bit too recursive for my tastes.

Still, there's a lot to love about "Gargoyles": solid writing, a cast without a single weak link, bold (and successful) attempts to push beyond the standardized limitations - both technological and "moral" - of animation at the time, and a rich, consistent mythology that holds up under scrutiny. All of this from a mid-'90s Disney cartoon.

Quoted For Ultimate Truth

2010-05-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

"And most of all, I want to know why in the FUCK these people who want the Silver Age back SO DAMN BAD seem to want everything BUT the essential optimism that characterized the fucking Silver Age brought back. I can't be the only person who's noticed this, can I?" -kazekage

Hardly a surprise, but...

2010-05-15T00:52:00.000-07:00

"Heroes" has been cancelled. So has "Flashforward".

I very much doubt that the demise of "Flashforward" comes as a shock to anyone - any series that needs a three-month hiatus to stabilize itself, after losing two showrunners in rapid succesion, after only nine episodes, is utterly doomed. Still, it had a rather interesting premise and solid, capable actors.

Why, then, did I lose interest in it so quickly (along with the rest of America, it seems)? I suspect the main reason was the overabundance of irrelevant subplots: there were about a dozen storylines introduced (again, in nine episodes) and few of them had any meaningful connection. Yes, our FBI protagonist's investigation and his potentially-doomed marriage are worth following, not so much the tale of his AA sponsor's war-ravaged daughter. The cancer-stricken doctor is certainly sympathetic, but the babysitter? Not really. And the writers throw in so many red herrings and dead-ends that it just turned into a confusing jumble after only a few months. With cast members jumping ship even before the official announcement, it's probably best to quietly turn out the lights and call it a day.

"Heroes" is, of course, another matter altogether. At one time occupying the top spot on my must-see TV list, its downfall was a far more protracted and painful affair.

In many ways, it was a series that comic book aficionados like myself had been waiting for: an original, live-action superhero drama that took itself seriously while tossing the an occasional wink to the old conventions and tropes. It was the X-Men without giant robots and spandex; it was "Watchmen" without the overwhelming pessimism; it was "Astro City" set in New York without the pre-arranged public acceptance of superhumans.

(The fact that they had Milo Ventimiglia, Zachary Quinto and Adrian Pasdar, sometimes on the same screen? Well, that was just a bonus for me personally.)

And despite various hiccups along the way, the first season managed to tell a good story, with a great villain in Sylar. There was suspense, romance, a few dramatic deaths, a fair amount of action (though I'm sure the Kirby Plaza showdown could've used a bit more flash) and more; all in all, an excellent start.

Then the second season came, and... well, that's where the decline started, though it was gradual enough that you might not notice it without hindsight. Of course, Tim Kring's defense is that the WGA strike brought an abrupt halt to the season - technically true, since the second season lasted 11 episodes rather than the traditional 22-24.

But even if you take those eleven episodes on their own merits, they're not particularly good, largely because they just reiterate the first season's strengths in a lesser capacity: another apocalyptic threat, another trip to a dystopian future, another Mystery From The Past (and wow was that revelation a letdown) and so on. Characters started doing very foolish things simply because the plot demanded it. Guest stars such as Nichelle Nichols, Joanna Cassidy and Nicholas D'Agosto were utterly wasted despite being built up as significant figures in the storyline.

The real turning point, in my opinion, was showrunner Tim Kring's decision to abandon his original plan for the series, wherein each season would feature a different cast of characters. It was a daring plan and one that could have worked quite easily: if you can create six popular characters, there's no reason why you can't create six more further down the line. And by the first season finale most of the characters had wrapped up their individual subplots: Sylar was defeated and probably killed, Hiro completed his quest, Nathan and Peter saved each other, the Hawkins family was reunited... all nice and neat, minus a few loose threads.

And instead of leaving well enough alone, Kring preserved the cast in the second season... and then dumped a whole batch of new characters on his viewers. Some, like Dana Davis' Monica Dawson and Kristen Bell's electrifying (in more ways than one) turn as Elle Bishop, were instant darlings; others, like Mexican twins Maya and Alejandro and seasonal Big Bad Adam Monroe (played by David Anders), were... less successful. To put it both mildly and politely.

The problem was, of course, that having these second-stringers around only demonstrated how poorly their storylines were being handled in comparison to the ones who'd been around for a whole season already. It didn't work because the writers simply didn't have the time to develop the new characters while formulating new storylines for characters they'd already established.

Then the third season lapsed into utter nonsense: more new characters, hopelessly entangled subplots, and a loss of anything even remotely resembling coherence. Notable guest stars such as Seth Green, Breckin Meyer, John Glover, Francis Capra and Dan Byrd were kept from making any significant contribution (indeed, most of them just stood around and talked for a while before disappearing into the ether and never returning).

Of course, the end result of this increasingly rapid degeneration was painfully clear: rather than embodying the best aspects of the superhero genre, "Heroes" came to represent said genre's worst excesses. Characters who'd long since outlived their purpose were maintained, without being given equally compelling new directions. Storylines became convoluted beyond comprehension, with retcons becoming more and more common. Plot dictated motivation, even when the plot made no sense to begin with. It became, for lack of a better term, a hot mess (literally so: Sylar may have devolved into a useless, whining prat but good lord Zach Quinto is still a poster boy for snu-snu).

Getting axed at this point is more a mercy-killing than executive meddling. I can't even say I'm particularly sorry to see it go, since I said my goodbyes to "Heroes" while it was still on the air. As with most spectacular TV flops in recent years, I can only hope that the right lessons will be learned here...

In Defense of Fan Fiction

2010-05-05T12:27:00.000-07:00

Author Diana Gabaldon has problems with fan fiction.

indigo_5, herself a fanfic writer, responds. She is joined on her LJ by yours truly, even as many more reply on Gabaldon's own blog in response to her rather poorly-informed views on what fan fiction is. There are many, many intelligent discussions currently going on at these two sites regarding the issue, and I don't want to duplicate or cut-and-paste excessively, so go, read.

This flare-up got me thinking about my own stance on fan fiction. No surprise, I've long been a defender of this phenomenon - even tried my hand at it once or twice, just to see if I could - and I've often taken the rather extreme position that fan fiction is as valid as the texts it's based on.

Why? Because the concept of "intellectual property" gets a bit wobbly once you consider how character archetypes and plot conventions work in literature: any tree-hugging Elf can be traced back to Tolkien, figures like Achilles and Arthur have appeared hundreds (if not thousands) of times in practically every genre under the sun... I don't know if I'd go so far as to reiterate the old cliche of "No New Ideas", but there's some weight to the argument that the execution is what counts - that you can take the familiar and shuffle it around until it becomes new and interesting again.

And I think that's what has writers like Anne Rice and Diana Gabaldon so downright terrified of fan fiction, to the point of decrying it as both illegal and immoral (the former, not even close, and the latter is such a subjective value judgment that there's no point debating it): if "intellectual property" goes the way of the dodo, and literature becomes a meritocracy where the only credit you earn for authoring a work is based on the actual stylistic, aesthetic and thematic quality of said work... well, that'll be when we separate the best from the rest, won't it?

Because you can go ahead and write a novel and make the New York Times, but then some amateur on the Interweb spins a tale that outshines you on every level, using your own characters. That's when we'll see where the real talent lies... and authors who've coasted by on atrocious writing (why yes, Stephenie Meyer, that is my fiery gaze you're feeling on the back of your neck) will find themselves in very awkward positions.

TV Review: The 10th Kingdom

2010-04-19T05:23:00.000-07:00

On paper, this really should've worked better than it did.

"The 10th Kingdom" is a ten-hour TV miniseries adopting the same subversive, iconoclastic approach to fairy tales that's become both popular and common over the last decade, from "Shrek" to "Enchanted" to "Fables". Broadly speaking, the premise is that all those tales really happened, but in the distant past - the common realm shared by such figures as Snow White, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood and so on has been split into nine kingdoms, ruled by the descendants of those legendary women. This is a world where, as one character puts it, "Happy Ever After didn't last as long as we'd hoped."

When a new Evil Queen escapes her imprisonment, Virginia Lewis and her father Tony - a pair of thoroughly ordinary people living in New York (the titular Tenth Kingdom) - are drawn into this fantasy world, dodging trolls, dwarves, gypsies, the Queen's Huntsman and all sorts of stock fairy tale types. Accompanied by the Big Bad Wolf and Snow White's grandson (trapped in the form of a dog, naturally), Virginia and Tony must stop the Evil Queen's plans and save the nine kingdoms.

That's an excellent premise, especially for such an extensive series. And to its credit, "The 10th Kingdom" makes the most of its fantastic settings without becoming a Tolkienesque travelogue. Since the plot hinges mostly on the Queen's machinations, our protagonists are constantly moving from one exotic location to the other, trying to stay ahead of her. The effects are pretty impressive for a TV miniseries: the opening montage deserves special attention, as New York transforms into a fairy tale kingdom. It's absolutely stunning, even if that particular scene never actually happens in the story.

Unfortunately, the casting is a bit... off. Which isn't to say there aren't some superb performances: Scott Cohen's Wolf is a neurotic mess who can't decide whether to court Virginia or gnaw on her bones, and despite initially coming off as a squicky pseudo-rapist, he actually ends up becoming one of the most sympathetic cast members largely due to Cohen's endearing tics. And Ed O'Neill as the Troll King? Wow. Of course, the real surprise is Dianne Wiest as the Queen. After seeing her in movies like "Edward Scissorhands", "Practical Magic" or "The Associate", you could be forgiven for writing Wiest off as a typical "Nice Mom" actress... but I had a feeling she could go further, especially when she went nuclear on Gabriel Byrne at the end of "In Treatment". And that's exactly what happens here: Wiest seems like she'd be more suited for a Fairy Godmother type of role, making her more imperious moments even more shocking and commanding. When she tells her stepson he'll be begging at her feet for food, she does so in a very pleasant tone - which makes her even scarier.

Sadly, the series is also saddled with two protagonists who are utterly wrong for the roles: Kimberly Williams is painfully limited as Virginia, playing her scenes in a dull monotony to the point where she can't muster enough real emotion for the film's most climactic revelations. Williams seems completely out of her element, even before the fairy tale aspects come into play: as the series' main focalizer, we spend time with her before she becomes involved in the adventure, and there's just nothing interesting about her. And then there's John Larroquette as Virginia's father Tony: a mere annoyance at first, Tony's character just gets more and more grating and abrasive as the series progresses, and since he's a protagonist there's no getting away from him.

It's no exaggeration to say that Williams and Larroquette derail the series: at first, they're generic fish-out-of-water adventurers, but midway through the storyline their characters become personally involved in the plot, except both Virginia and her father are so flat and unengaging that the whole thing falls apart.

And that's a shame, because the story has some rather surprising feminist overtones: traditional victims like Snow White and Red Riding Hood are rewritten as powerful, beloved monarchs whose contribution to the realm went beyond just getting their own Happy Ever After. Camryn Manheim has a cameo as the spirit of a grown-up Snow White: older, flawed, but still adored and respected - not because of how she looks but because of who she is and what she did. And her advice to Virginia deserves to be quoted verbatim: "Lonely, lost girls like us can rescue themselves." Also? One of the three trolls chasing Virginia and Tony is female, and no one says a word about it.

"The 10th Kingdom" is exactly the kind of postmodern fairy tale I want to see. There's nothing wrong with parody per se - "Shrek" certainly did it well enough - but weaving together all those fragments into a coherent whole is impressive, even moreso when clear efforts are made to put a fresher spin on the moral and gender issues inherent in the classic fables. But once Virginia and Tony take center stage, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain interest in the unfolding events. This is one instance where bad casting decisions really bring the whole thing down a notch or two.

Expanding on my Feb. 12 post

2010-03-19T13:30:00.000-07:00

Because I don't think I've ever talked about my affinity for MTV's "Daria".

I was fresh out of high school when I first "met" Daria Morgendorffer. It was a second-season episode - I forget which one specifically, but I remember that it dealt with Daria's feelings for Trent. I remember that because I'd gone through the exact same thing a few months earlier, developed a huge crush on someone who couldn't have been more wrong for me. And I handled it the way Daria handled it: miserably. A few months later, I ran into him and had this... epiphany that it never would've worked anyway. And that was it.

It's not that "Daria" is a completely accurate rendition of my (or anyone's) high school years; I would've loved to have her gift for deadpan sarcasm, we didn't have a Fashion Club to mock relentlessly, and while our teachers could be a bit sadistic, they weren't quite as far gone as Lawndale High's staff.

But we did have a Kevin and a Brittany. (Come to think of it, we've had Kevin and Britney too.) And I had a maladjusted best friend who spent most of her time drawing in a little notebook which she'd never let me see.

So when "Daria" comes out on DVD, I'll be there. Because it actually offers two pleasures for the price of one: nostalgia for my fonder memories of high school, and absolutely scorching satire of the parts I could've done without. The fact that it's one of my favorite coming-of-age stories of the '90s is, of course, an added bonus.

TV Review: "Dune", "Children of Dune"

2010-03-19T08:52:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, a 17-year-old girl saw David Lynch's adaptation of "Dune". She did so at the behest of her boyfriend at the time, a hardcore Trekkie who also worshipped at the altar of Frank Herbert.

Three hours later, she came to the conclusion that there probably weren't enough drugs on Earth that could make her understand what the hell was going on.

To be fair, that's a problem I usually have with David Lynch movies, and since I lacked the time (and the disposition) to read Herbert's novels, I was content to let matters lie for a while. And up until a few weeks ago, that was that.

And then my dear kazekage brought up "Dune" in relation to "Avatar", and as is usually the case in our dialogues, he got me thinking. I realized that I'd never gone back to Herbert's creation as an adult - I do that from time to time, going back to stories I dismissed as a teenager just to see if my perspective has changed over the years. Sometimes I find myself developing the opposite opinion ("Sliders" seems so much more formulaic now than it did fifteen years ago), and sometimes... well, I still can't think of a single figure in the DCU pantheon who remotely interests me.

Of course, with my graduate thesis still circling over my head like a vulture, reading the books is still out of the question, so I decided to settle for the "Dune" and "Children of Dune" TV miniseries, written and directed by John Harrison. With a combined length of just over 9 hours, and a reputation that credits Harrison with being more faithful to the books than Lynch, I figured it'd be enough to get some idea of what Herbert was doing.

To my surprise, I really liked the first part of "Dune". Oh, it's slow, but it does an excellent job setting up the various worlds and people within. The actors mostly do well with the material, especially given how flat most of the characters really are: Alec Newman's Paul is just whiny enough to sell his aristocratic background without being obnoxious, Ian McNeice is marvelous as Baron Harkonnen, and Matt Keeslar is exactly the kind of pretty it takes to play the vapid and treacherous Feyd. I also enjoyed the complex political maneuvering between the three Great Houses. Part 1 ends with the climactic Harkonnen attack on House Atreides and the death of Duke Leto.

And then, in part 2... the Desert.

In a word? Oy.

I don't know, maybe it's me. Maybe I'm being unrealistic when I expect science-fiction to avoid the ethereal metaphysics of religion. Of course, I've never seen that combination work well, or at all: not with Kara Thrace, or Neo, or John Henry the Terminator talking scripture with a religious FBI agent. It always comes off as facile tripe, a cheap way of raising suspense by asking impossible questions that ultimately don't "require" an answer. And it completely takes me out of the story.

So after a fairly interesting and engaging first part, imagine my dismay when we spend ninety minutes exploring the Fremen culture, a wafer-thin metaphor for other "desert people" you may or may not have heard of right here on Earth. And then everyone gets high on homegrown drugs and gains superpowers. Paul, of course, is the Chosen One, the Messiah, etc. And he has visions of the future. Of course. By the time the third act started I was rather disengaged; it doesn't help that the story becomes rather predictable at that point, in that the Fremen defeat their Harkonnen tyrants, Paul becomes Emperor, et cetera. Everything is framed in prophecies and dreams and rituals, none of which I find even slightly coherent.

And what's especially frustrating about "Dune" is that, if Harrison had cut out the religious context, he might've been left with a great sci-fi political thriller. The most intriguing sequences in the second and third parts include Princess Irulan's investigation into the Atreides massacre, the Baron's scheme to glorify Feyd at his brother's expense and so on. Paul's ascension to the throne works on that level too. I even loved the various accents and the weird hats (seriously, there are some weird hats in this miniseries). But by the end of the miniseries, the damage had already been done.

Still, I was determined to see this through, so I continued to "Children of Dune". In some ways, it's an improvement; the political storyline is much more engaging from the very start, as Paul's reign has quickly degenerated into a senseless (and apparently meaningless) jihad against the rest of the universe. Paul himself is trapped by his position, while his own people conspire against him with the help of his defeated enemies, including Irulan and the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother. Meanwhile, Irulan's older sister Wensicia (played to perfection by Susan Sarandon) has a few schemes of her own.

Of course, by now I'd come to expect getting my hopes dashed, and sure enough, Paul spends most of part 1 having the same vision over and over again, about something called the Golden Path. I'll get to that in a bit, but let's just say right now that Path leads nowhere you'd want to go.

To both Harrison's and Herbert's credit, I have to say that "Children of Dune" takes some bold turns: Paul, our protagonist and focalizer since the beginning of "Dune", is written out at the end of the first act to make way for his children, Leto and Ghanima (with Leto being played by the absolutely adorable James McAvoy). Paul's sister Alia takes over as Regent, but her mental instability - long foreshadowed if poorly set up - leads her to become increasingly oppressive and violent. As it turns out, she's having hallucinations of the long-dead Baron Harkonnen, who may or may not be possessing her. That was a nice twist. Alia starts seeing the twins as a threat to her power, they go on the run, and... well, that's when I hit the next metaphysical pothole.

See, throughout the first part of "Children of Dune", Paul has the same vision over and over again, where Leto tells him about a Golden Path that holds the key to humanity's salvation. What is the Golden Path? Damned if I know: no one ever explains it. Oh, Leto undergoes a significant (and similarly ill-explained) transformation at the end, but still, as he's standing there declaring a new dawn for mankind, I'm utterly mystified as to the question of just what in the name of Gregor Samsa he's talking about.

Again, it's a situation where the best parts of the story are overshadowed by vague mumbo-jumbo about space heroin. And unlike "Dune", where the characters' relatively flat nature allowed their own arcs to continue despite the religious interruptions, "Children of Dune" seems to lose track of various characters, skipping over significant developments so we can spend more time on Paul and his kids tripping out. What happens to Wensicia's plan to steal sandworms? What happens to the Bene Gesserit after the Reverend Mother's execution? Why does Irulan switch sides after her conspiracy fails? Why don't we get to see characters reacting to major deaths such as Duncan and Paul himself in part 3? Because of drugs. So remember, kids, drugs are bad and will not give you superpowers. They may bore you to the point of utter frustration, though.

And that's it for "Dune". Unlike the Lynch version, I could definitely see a lot of potential in Harrison's adaptations... but at the same time, they're guilty of the same weak, wishy-washy use of pseudo-religion as a way to push the story forward without really thinking it through. And on that level it's no different than something like "Battlestar Galactica", which - despite having a tremendously talented cast and a brilliant story - ended on a note that still pisses me off, a year after the fact. If that aspect hadn't been so dominant, I think I would've liked "Dune". I think I would've liked it a lot.

I've been waiting for this moment...

2010-02-12T23:58:00.000-08:00

... for a very, very long time.

May 11, 2010.

Change

2010-01-29T04:25:00.001-08:00

Since Haloscan's shutting down and I have no intention of paying someone for the right to talk to people on my own blog, Sententia 3.0 is switching back to the default Blogger comment system. Unfortunately, this means any ongoing dialogue will have to start from scratch. I've saved all the comments, I just need to see if they can be imported...

EDIT: This also means I've been forced to change the RSS feed - please update accordingly!

On the matter of Spider-Man

2010-01-15T11:26:00.001-08:00

While I'll admit that Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst deserve all the credit for making the Spider-Man film franchise a success in the first place, they're also responsible for
"Spider-Man 3" - and after that debacle, I can hardly blame anyone looking for a change.

Now, the mere idea that Robert Pattinson may assume the starring role has been met with the expected wailing and gnashing of teeth - again, not without justification. Personally, I much prefer the possibility of Michael Cera, if only because I've thought for some time now that Cera has the potential to pull a Heath Ledger and break type...

At any rate, I submit that as horrible as a Pattinson-led "Spider-Man" would be, there are a few pop culture icons Sony could've chosen that would be even worse:

And who'd play Mary Jane? Take your pick of these pop culture viruses:

Bottom line? Yes, the situation's rather bad at the moment. But it could be so much worse, so easily.

Ye GODS...

2009-12-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

I just got back from "Twilight: New Moon".

Yes. Yes, obviously I know better.

The whole thing started as an experiment: my best friend Anita insisted that if you view the work of Stephanie Meyer as a comedy, and assume the horrifically awkward and over-the-top aspects are completely intentional, you can actually enjoy it as a send-up of Anne Rice.

So we had free tickets and figured we might as well give it a try; at the very least we could provide a running commentary in the style of Waldorf and Statler. And since we checked the theatre on the day of the screening and it seemed pretty empty, the plan was set.

Ominous Portent #1: The theatre was bloody packed when we got there.

Ominous Portent #2: We were surrounded on all sides not by prepubescent girls, as I'd thought, but 20-plus-year-old women and three men who were very obviously over 40, and as later events would show, they weren't there for the same reasons Anita and I were.

So the film starts with the social exploits of Bella, and almost immediately both Ani and I agreed that if we knew this girl in real life we'd thrash the living daylights out of her. A complete shrew to anyone and everyone who shows her the slightest bit of consideration, Bella is precisely the type of person who deserves to be utterly alone.

Of course, as we said, the point was to try and recontextualize the film as a comedy, and I have to admit that we both started laughing when we interpreted Bella's desire to become a vampire as basically admitting that she didn't have a soul to begin with so it wasn't much of a change for her. That and the whole "I want to come / I don't want you to come" had us in tears ten minutes into the movie.

And then things got ugly.

A woman sitting next to Anita - thirty-five if she was a day, so help me God - leans over and asks us very pointedly to shut up so she can enjoy the movie.

A 35-year-old woman is taking this movie seriously.

Naturally, we flipped her the bird and kept going - normally we're not those types of people, but by then we couldn't help it: Bella sits in a chair for three months? Anita actually choked on popcorn at that point. Bella tries to compliment her Native American friend by telling him he's "kinda beautiful"? I'm reasonably sure I turned purple by then, tears in my eyes, whispering as quietly as I could to Anita that Cher called and she wanted her hair back (which pretty much sent her into an epileptic fit).

At which point one of those older gentlemen I'd mentioned got up, turned to face us and roared to shut the fuck up.

So we left.

I guess the moral of the story is that "Twilight" can be hilarious if you look at it from A Certain Point of View (tm Obi-Wan Kenobi), but for best effect, do not watch it with diehard fans. For some reason, they tend to take this very seriously.

And as an aside? This justifies the existence of Youtube. That is all.

Posted (almost) without comment

2009-12-20T09:03:00.000-08:00

It's about time.

Postmortem (not what you think)

2009-12-15T03:46:00.000-08:00

It's been over two months since my last post, and that was the Big Goodbye to the Savage Critics.

I've had (and am still having) a bit of a dry spell - there's loads of things to talk about but I haven't had the time, energy or inclination to just sit down and blog about it. And I'll probably drop out of sight for a few months more after this.

For right now, though...

Well, it all started when my dear friend Kazekage over at Witless Prattle called my attention to yet another firestorm breaking out over Power Girl.

Of course, my immediate reaction was along the same lines as any other news pertaining to the Big Two: "Whatever."

But I started reminiscing about a time when I was much more passionate about female representation in comics. And I remembered that I'd lost interest in that particular area of debate not because I stopped believing in the cause, but because it was becoming increasingly obvious that nothing was changing. Every time the mainstream seemed to learn its lesson, Gail Simone would applaud Brian Bendis for killing off the Wasp just so Henry Pym could finally be more interesting (that would be more convincing were it not for Bendis' little Tigra debacle earlier in the year), or you'd have that rather unfortunate incident with Spider-Man's roommate.

So I wasn't particularly surprised that the same old arguments, centered around the exact same characters, still continue. I don't much care to jump back into that.

And then I saw the season finale of "Dexter", and it got me thinking about female characters in TV... and I realized it hasn't been a great season for women. At all. To wit:

---

Supernatural: Ellen and Jo Harvelle

HOW: Sacrificed themselves to give the Winchester brothers a shot at Lucifer.

WHY: Anyone watching this show long enough learns two things: no matter how vocal the fanbase gets, Sam and Dean will never go horizontal (they've done everything short of having Eric Kripke come and carve that message into the camera lens to stress the point), and most supporting characters have a limited shelf life.

The problem here, though, is that as of the most recent midseason finale, there are no women left on the show. Bela died at the end of the third season; we lost Pamela, Ruby and Lilith during the fourth, with Anna locked away somewhere; and now Ellen and Jo, the only female hunters who've ever lasted more than one episode, are gone.

JUSTIFIED? Hard to say. On the one hand, the show has never shied away from making clear the fact that hunters die young and bloody - the fact that Dean and Sam have both been killed over the course of the series certainly seems to indicate as much. And Ellen already dodged one bullet at the end of season 2. But on the other hand, it wouldn't have been such a bad thing to have a mother-daughter duo hang around and serve as a counterpart to the brothers' own relationship; as it stands, they're just one more subject for the Whiny Winchesters to wangst about.

---

Dexter: Rita Morgan

HOW: The Trinity Killer's last victim.

WHY: Based on the hype, Rita's murder was designed to be a "game-changing" moment - something that would represent a complete break from the status quo of the first four seasons.

JUSTIFIED? Given that this was the moment that pushed me to put everything else on hold and blog, I obviously have strong feelings about Rita's death. Now, I'll admit that I was not her biggest fan this season: she was obnoxious, overbearing and seemingly incapable of doing anything by herself. Her role was pretty much the same as always, the obstacle that complicates Dexter's plans and forces him to get creative. And I'll admit that there were quite a few moments this season where I wished she'd just take the kids and leave Dexter alone.

This, though... this was absolutely brutal. The worst part is that thanks to the season's opening scene, we know exactly what Arthur Mitchell did to her. In front of her infant son. It's almost too unsettling to imagine.

The question, then, is whether changing the status quo justifies the use of such an overfamiliar cliche as Women in Refrigerators. This was a show where the alternate scenario could've played out. Instead, Rita dies as she lived: not defined on her own merits but only in terms of her importance to Dexter.

---

Weeds: Pilar Zuazo

HOW: After overhearing her threats against him and his brother, Shane Botwin bashes Pilar's brains in with a croquet mallet, killing her instantly.

WHY: Shane's mental instability had been building up for years, as far back as season 3; killing Pilar in cold blood was the climax.

JUSTIFIED: Yes, but with a caveat: this was actually the first time Nancy had had to deal with a female antagonist, much less the woman behind last season's Big Bad. I loved the contrast between the two, Nancy as the failed wannabe crimelord whose kids either ignore or deliberately undermine her, and Pilar as the drug baroness who effortlessly intimidates people like Esteban and Guillermo. And I was waiting for Nancy to step up - having Shane do it for her felt a bit like cheating.

---

Dollhouse: Madeline Costley/Mellie/November

HOW: Manipulated by the Rossum Corporation and captured by the DC Dollhouse.

WHY: Best guess? We've known since the start of season 2 that budget cuts and other considerations reduced Amy Acker and Miracle Laurie to guest-star status (Saunders still hasn't turned up after going AWOL in the premiere). Given that the series is being cancelled at the end of this season, I suppose this is just the quickest way to wrap up that particular loose end.

JUSTIFIED: Not really, no - the episode is edited in such a way that you don't see her being kidnapped and you don't know what happens to her: is she wiped clean again? Imprinted with an alternate personality? Not the most satisfying conclusion to her story, especially since said story had already had a proper ending last season.

---

There are a few more examples I can think of, but they're pretty much along the same lines.

Now, to be absolutely clear, I'm not advocating a position where female characters (or minority characters, for that matter) be preserved in amber and kept safe from any kind of dramatic upheaval. Far from it: Ronald D. Moore screwed the pooch in many, many ways during the fourth season of "Battlestar Galactica", but putting a bullet in Felix Gaeta after his failed mutiny wasn't one of them. Neither was Laura Roslin's death. And while I was annoyed at the loss of Ianto Jones, it wasn't because he was gay: rather, he was the most interesting of the three Torchwood survivors in terms of his backstory and whatever secrets he still kept. A lot more could've been done with him, and killing him off just so the villain can make a point? Pretty much a waste.

And that, I think, is what's been bothering me with these (and other) characters: not that they were killed or removed at all, but that their end only served to push other characters forward. To choose a more successful example, Jean Grey didn't die (the first time) to put Cyclops in the spotlight - after all, Claremont ended up reducing Scott's role in the team after that.

I guess what I'd like is for writers to exercise a bit more thought before pulling a Fridge stunt; it's far too easy, and far too common, and might cause more harm than good in the long term.

Savage Critics: The Big Goodbye

2009-10-04T04:23:00.000-07:00

Here.

Exhaling deeply...

2009-10-02T11:58:00.000-07:00

I just quit the Savage Critics.

Anyone who'd been keeping up with my comics-related posts (or lack thereof) over the past few months can probably guess why, and Hibbs willing I'll do a goodbye post over there that sums things up.

Even though I know it's the right thing for me to do right now, I'm still feeling the loss - I'd been following the Savage Critics back when Graeme McMillan was single-handedly terrorizing the Big Two with Fanboy Rampage, and when I got the invitation to join the group... well, I still consider it a huge honor to have been considered one of them. My feelings towards comics in general may have changed, but Brian, Jeff, Graeme, Abhay, Joe, Tucker, Dick, Chris, Sean, David and Douglas will always have my utmost respect and admiration.

Game Reviews: Iron Roses, Mata Hari

2009-09-13T03:21:00.000-07:00

Well, if I spend all my time on thesis-related work I'll likely fuse every neuron in my brain. So today we'll be looking at two contemporary adventure games, Iron Roses and Mata Hari.

The adventure game genre has always been something of a double-edged sword. It's ideal for telling stories because adventure games typically require only a minimum amount of interaction with the player, which means you can sit back (for the most part) and let the plot unfold without being distracted by gameplay mechanisms.

Unfortunately, this also means that once the story's over you have little reason to replay the game. Even if multiple endings are possible, the narrative experience just won't change that much. Contrast this to strategy games where any tactic can change the course of a battle, or RPGs that let you develop characters a dozen different ways, resulting in a dozen different play-throughs, and so on.

In the olden days, the Sierra paradigm dealt with this problem by really making you work to complete the story. Oh, all you had to do was click the PICK UP command and then click on the fire extinguisher... but if you didn't get the insulated gloves from the shelf three hours ago, a burst of static electricity will detonate the extinguisher as soon as you touch it, and the foam will suffocate you. Sierra games were particularly brutal: you could die eighty times before leaving the first screen, or waste half an hour pixel-hunting for a coin on a beach, or get stuck in a no-win scenario because you didn't pick up a key item and you can't backtrack.

The only way to effectively cope with this (without using a walkthrough) would be to constantly save and reload, inching your way towards victory through a very lengthy series of trials and errors. This had the effect of making Sierra games seem at least three times longer than they actually were, and since the death scenes were usually humorous, you didn't mind so much when your character turned left instead of right and literally fell off the screen. Unless you forgot to save, in which case you'd be very frustrated.

With Sierra's decline, a more forgiving trend emerged, pioneered by companies such as LucasArts ("Sam & Max Hit The Road"): gamers weren't punished for making a mistake or overlooking an important inventory item. You could always go back to a previous area and search more thoroughly. This allowed the story to flow more smoothly; it also made the genre much less challenging, which in turn made them much shorter.

"Iron Roses" and "Mata Hari" are examples of the current model in the adventure genre: the gameplay is largely simplistic in that someone tells you to do something, you go to the appropriate location, you do it, you report back and receive a reward of some kind that moves you a step closer to the endgame. I'm probably generous in estimating that neither game takes more than six hours from start to finish.

To be fair, both games try to pad things out with mandatory mini-games: whether it's waiting tables or performing a dance, the plot pauses at certain points to break up the "fetch quest" routine. In theory, it's a good idea that can maintain a player's interest if the core game is too monotonous; in practice, these mini-games just aren't compelling enough.

"Iron Roses" tells the story of Alex, a sympathetic young woman who wants one last crack at fame and fortune. Her band, the Iron Roses, disbanded years ago due to the drunken antics of their faux-British lead singer; the group split up and went their separate ways. When Alex finds out about an upcoming Battle of the Bands, she is determined to reunite the band (sans lead singer) and reclaim their lost glory.

It's a solid, down-to-earth premise that works nicely with the adventure game format: to reassemble the Iron Roses, Alex has to run around town from one ex-member to another, helping them out with their problems so they'll have time to hear her out. There's even a bit of sardonic lampshade-hanging regarding the fact that Alex is expected to solve everyone else's issues before they're willing to lift a finger for her. Being a game about a rock band, it's worth noting that the game's soundtrack is quite good and helps set the mood during various scenes.

Unfortunately, as I said above, the story's dreadfully abbreviated, and leaves some awkward plot holes: Alex's roommate Lynn disappears after the second act, and there's a last-minute development with her father that seems to come out of nowhere. I would've liked to see more of the band's past rather than just be told how awesome they were and how John (the lead singer) ruined everything; I rarely encourage padding, but it might've done more good than harm here. And though the ending tries to loop back to the beginning, it actually falls short by not showing us whether the Iron Roses actually win the contest. Considering that it's the lynchpin of everything Alex does, that's a rather striking omission.

"Mata Hari" faces an entirely different problem: it's too sedate. Based on the life story of the infamous Mata Hari - now immortalized as the archetypal femme fatale - the game promises intrigue and adventure, but you'll spend most of your time either talking to people or playing some rather dull minigames. I was actually surprised at how placid this game turned out to be: granted, it's probably a more realistic depiction of Margaretha Zelle's biography, but that doesn't make it especially entertaining.

The game also features a rather poorly-constructed quasi-RPG system wherein you can perform certain acts to increase Mata's spycraft, wealth and skill, either through minigames or uncovering hidden objects. You'd be forgiven for ignoring it altogether, except that higher final scores unlock alternate endings regarding Mata Hari's ultimate fate. The bigger problem is that you'd have to spend an absurd amount of time - far more than is really necessary for the story - to get more than halfway there. And there's really only the one minigame per category: to attain wealth you have to play a minigame with a hilariously subdued recreation of Mata Hari's provocative dances, and to raise your skill you need to evade agents while running up and down train tracks across Europe (not as much fun as it sounds, believe me).

Both these games left me feeling like they hadn't achieved much with the tools they had: decent graphics, (mostly) solid voice acting, strong premises... but they fall short. And maybe the problem does have to do with challenge, or lack thereof. If the puzzles are easily solved, and the plot just isn't lengthy enough to hold the player's attention for very long, the solution isn't to throw in a bunch of tangentially-related minigames: clearly, that's not helping. Crimson Cow's "A Vampyre Story" was a much stronger game than either of these, simply by virtue of having a really good story that - while segmented across several games - still accomplishes a lot more than either of the two we've looked at today...

Apropos of absolutely nothing...

2009-07-26T08:58:00.001-07:00

I didn't make it to "Star Trek" while it was in theatres, but I've already seen at least one way in which it's superior to the original:

WANT:

DO NOT WANT:

WANT:

NO THANKS:

HELL YEAH:

NOPE:

MIGHT WANT IN 5-10 YEARS:

WON'T WANT EVER:

WANT:

UNABLE TO COMPLY, BUILDING IN PROGRESS:

SDCC Commentary

2009-07-25T02:00:00.000-07:00

* One of Marvel's many confounding tendencies is their occasional imitation of a DC Big Event via a Small Event. Last time it was "Identity Disc", now it's the upcoming X-Men crossover "Necrosha" which apparently involves the undead wreaking havoc. The fact that I automatically thought of "Blackest Night" even though I'm not reading "Blackest Night" is probably not a good sign. Still, if Craig Kyle and Christoper Yost are to be believed, it's one of those crossovers where each series tells a self-contained story - a fortunate choice, given how "Messiah War" turned out.

* "X-Men Noir" is coming back for a sequel miniseries. I liked the first one, might end up checking this out.

* Gerard Way has two upcoming projects coming out at Dark Horse: a third volume of "Umbrella Academy" (always welcome) and a new series called "Killjoy". Now, Way did not do himself any favors by calling it a love letter to the '90s, since the '90s are already back with their damned ugly foilograms... On the other hand, I was reserved about "Umbrella Academy" too - a comic from the lead singer of My Chemical Romance? Parents, hide your razors and black hair dye! - and it turned out to be one of the best stories Dark Horse has published in years.

* I'm expecting a hail of posts around the blogosphere titled "It's A Miracle!" Yes, Marvel has finally completed its acquisition of Marvelman/Miracleman, perhaps the greatest "lost epic" in mainstream comics. And this would be a coup worth celebrating, but there are a few caveats that bother me. For starters, I'm sorry, but this is Marvel Comics we're talking about: much as I'd love to be optimistic, this wouldn't be the first time they made a big splash at a convention and then utterly failed to come through, as I'm sure any fan of Stephen King recalls - they went from "Stephen King is writing comics" to "Stephen King is overseeing comics" to "Stephen King's assistant is co-writing comics". Here, too, any celebration may be premature: it seems Marvel's initial plan is to reprint the Mick Anglo Silver Age material, which is... well, it's Silver Age material. And not particularly good examples at that. It's the Moore/Gaiman saga everyone's waited for all these years.

Which raises another interesting question: am I to believe that Marvel, once it gains access to those specific issues, will reprint them faithfully? They're going to publish the childbirthing scene in "The Red King Syndrome"? The destruction of London in "Olympus"? Or are we going to start hearing about quiet censorship, "minor" tweaking of panels and so on? It seems unthinkable, but so does the notion that Marvel - having cowered in the face of possible controversy in the past - might balk at some of the themes Moore explored in his trilogy.

So... I don't know. Not breaking out the champagne yet. It would be wonderful if we got the whole hexalogy out there - "A Dream of Flying", "The Red King Syndrome", "Olympus", "The Golden Age", "The Silver Age" and "The Dark Age" - but I've seen Marvel drop the ball way, way too many times to get as worked up about this as I would have two or three years ago. We'll have to see what happens...

In the beginning God created CANCELLED DUE TO LOW SALES

2009-07-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

Hmph.

Okay. Decision time. I think it's becoming counter-productive to pick up new monthlies these days - I feel like a complete idiot for buying the first three issues of Jeff Parker's "Exiles" given its just-announced cancellation at issue 6. It feels like bad faith on Marvel's part: they got me to pay for a fragment of a story and they don't feel at all obligated to see it through.

I'll admit this is a personal reaction, because I did get invested in Parker's story (what little he had written so far), and that's just another dead-end now.

All of which is basically justifying the trade-waiting mindset; yes, I've heard the counterarguments that waiting for the trade lowers monthly sales and ultimately leads to cancellation... and yet for all the Big Two whine and cry about it, they're largely responsible for this situation by not supporting the lower-tier, Not Even Remotely Connected To Norman Osborn books at all.

So barring a few potential exceptions in the immediate future, I'm putting a moratorium on new series. I'm utterly sick and tired of having the rug pulled out for under my feet.

Where does this leave my position at "The Savage Critics"? Well, the webcomic reviews don't seem very popular, so I might need to think about a new approach. We'll see.

On a somewhat-related note, my pull list as of July 2009 (alphabetically):

Cable: I like the premise, but after a year I'm still not completely won over yet. This one's on thin ice, as it were.

Captain America: No complaints about Brubaker yet...

Daredevil: With a tremendous amount of hesitation, I'll stick around for the start of Andy Diggle's run, just to see how he handles it. If it works, great, I'll keep reading. If not, #500's my stop.

Fables / Jack of Fables: Running strong, no reason for me to drop either of them.

Immortal Iron Fist: Has this been cancelled? I can't seem to find any information on what comes after the Immortal Weapons mini...

The Sword: Like "Girls" before it, this latest series from the Luna Brothers has a set conclusion and we're already in the final act of the story. It's rather light, as these things go, but I'll see it through.

X-Factor: Loving what Peter David's doing with this series, as it's unpredictable and a lot of fun, rewarding both long-time readers and the guys who only know Trevor Fitzroy from Wikipedia.

X-Men Legacy: Depends entirely on what direction Carey takes after the Dark Reign tie-in - which I've duly skipped. Don't care, won't read.

And... that's it. Eight series, a third of what I was following back in the Jemas days. And I never thought I'd miss the Jemas days. Ever.

Episode in Review: Dollhouse - Epitaph One

2009-07-18T00:11:00.000-07:00

I wrapped up my season review of Dollhouse with the following comment:

"I suppose the question of whether I'll be watching season 2 is moot, given the vultures circling over this show, but I'm going to have to chalk this up as another disappointment from Camp Whedon. And those are really starting to pile up. I do hope he comes out with something in the near future to remind me why I used to love his work..."

As it turns out, I was wrong on several counts. For starters, "Dollhouse" has been renewed for a second season. This was quite a shock to me, given that the networks have been utterly merciless with genre TV over the past year or two given the cancellations of "Pushing Daisies" (no, still not over that), "Middleman", "The Unusuals", "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles", "Reaper", et cetera ad nauseum.

And then there's "Epitaph One".

For those who aren't familiar with the background, FOX initially commissioned thirteen episodes for the series' first season, but this included the unaired pilot - which Whedon famously discarded after completion - so that, even though the cast and crew had already produced "Epitaph One" as a coda to the first season, the network refused to air it, with only vague promises that it would eventually do so at some unspecified date in the future.

It should be said that this isn't yet another case of network interference derailing a narrative: for all intents and purposes, "Omega" is the finale. "Epitaph One" is an afterword.

It's also the best thing Whedon's done since "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog".

There's a certain habit I seem to be developing with regards to Joss Whedon, where I'm continually disappointed by his work only for him to create something that utterly astounds me, seemingly out of nowhere, perpetually redeeming my opinion of him as it were. After the Noxon years of "Buffy" he regained a lot of my faith "Dr. Horrible", lost it again during the unfortunate X-Men/Runaways/Buffy Season 8 Let-Down Hat Trick, and "Dollhouse" was inconsistent to the point of utter frustration: a return to form in some respects, a bitter failure in others. But if the second season stays in the ballpark of this episode, all slights will be forgiven and forgotten.

Why is this episode so great? At its core, "Epitaph One" is an expression of Whedon's greatest strength as a creator (and, I think, the reason he's so popular): the man takes chances. He puts real risk into the creative process and isn't afraid to change gears for the sake of the story. Case in point, our coda begins a decade in the future, with an entirely new cast, in a world gone utterly mad due to public use of Dollhouse technology. We'd seen hints of the potential dangers before, but only in generalized, undefined ways: for Mag, Zone and their companions, it's reality. Use a radio and you might catch a stray signal that will wipe your mind, or imprint you with a psychotic personality.

In the midst of this chaos, the survivors accidentally discover the original Dollhouse and start piecing together the mysteries of the past. We learn a bit about what happened to various characters (Topher's fate, in particular, is heartbreaking, and that's some more Whedon magic right there: I never thought I'd feel anything but disgust for Topher, and all it took to change that was one scene). After a few twists, one of which left my jaw hanging (you'll know it when you see it), the episode ends on an open note that allows for quite a few possibilities. Will the second season continue from this point and explore the post-apocalyptic landscape, making this episode the mother of all deck-clearing exercises? Or is this the series finale and upcoming episodes will retroactively build towards it?

Either way, I'm on pins and needles for more, which certainly wasn't the case after "Omega". Good show, Mr. Whedon.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 7

2009-06-27T03:25:00.000-07:00

Back with what may just be the most ambitious fan film to date: Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum courtesy of Chris Bouchard and Independent Online Cinema.

If we can agree that emulation is at least part of the agenda when making fan films, it stands to reason that the bigger the source material, the harder it'll be for low-budget fan work to reach even an approximation of that level. Rob Caves' "Hidden Frontier" universe used a lot of CGI and green-screen to resemble "Star Trek", visually if not ideologically, though the extent of its success is entirely debatable (as are most aspects of this particular field: YMMV is practically the First Commandment).

"The Hunt for Gollum" sets its sights much higher, as it's based on Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, which remains (in my opinion) one of the most impressive cinematic spectacles in recent history. This 40-minute fan film is set during a specific ellipsis in "The Fellowship of the Ring", when Gandalf returns to the Shire for the last time and tells Frodo that Gollum - the only other person who knew the location of the Ring - was captured by Sauron's forces.

Bouchard is working with two sources here: Jackson and Tolkien (specifically Tolkien's appendices to "Lord of the Rings"). The plot of the film is dictated by the appendices, wherein Gollum escapes Mordor only to be captured by Aragorn and imprisoned by the Elves (followed by a second escape). Visually, though, it's very much derived from the Jackson films: the Orcs have Cockney accents, Adrian Webster has that whole Grimy Badass look down pat as Aragorn, and there's considerable emphasis placed on the lovely natural setting.

But there are a few problems here, primarily to do with Gollum. Lacking the resources to sustain a prolonged CGI depiction of Gollum, Bouchard uses a combination of extreme long-shots and keeping Gollum in Aragorn's sack for most of the film, screaming and howling and babbling to himself. To be honest? It's not the most creative solution. Sure, realistically speaking it'd be a bit much to expect competition with New Line Cinema, and yet I can't help thinking that it diminishes Gollum's presence. I'm also fairly certain that some split-second shots in "The Hunt for Gollum" were cut-and-pasted from "Fellowship of the Ring", though I wouldn't swear on it.

I suppose the question that came to mind when I saw this was "Why?" There's no shortage of "side-stories" to tell in Middle-Earth - why choose to fill in a blank that, on the whole, isn't that interesting? Aragorn hunts down Gollum, kills some Orcs, catches Gollum and brings him to the Elves, and that's about it. Given that the stylistic/visual recreation is spot-on, I guess I would've preferred a story with a bit more meat to it.

Still, I have to fall back on a phrase that's probably becoming familiar if you've been following this column: there's something to be said for ambition. As Carlos Pedraza once pointed out during a discussion of "Hidden Frontier", there's a case to be made that fan films are in a state of "reciprocal evolution" - creators learn from their peers' mistakes and successes, and thanks to the medium of the Internet it's a lot quicker and a lot easier than Hollywood's learning curve. Pedraza attributed at least part of James Cawley's success with "Phase II" to the earlier presence of "Hidden Frontier", specifically the fact that there was a popular rough template that could be (and needed to be) adapted and refined for better results. And if "The Hunt for Gollum" represents a new starting point for future Tolkien fan-creators... well, they could do a lot worse.

Book Review: "Star Wars - Death Star" by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry

2009-06-26T22:33:00.001-07:00

I have to admit to being a bit skeptical when this novel came out - at first glance, it seemed like one of those "Untold Tale" types that suffer from either too many or too few continuity plugs, and which ultimately overcomplicate the original story to the point where you're really better off without it.

But Michael Reaves and Steve Perry have actually done quite a good job here by exploiting a legitimate gap in the narrative: the Death Star is already complete and operational when "A New Hope" begins, so the novel starts with the station still under construction and runs all the way through to the Battle of Yavin.

What makes this book so interesting is the fact that it omits the Rebel perspective entirely, and only occasionally focuses on familiar faces like Vader or Tarkin. Instead, Reaves and Perry assemble a cast of no less than nine protagonists, all original characters whose separate plotlines intertwine while staying just outside the scope of the film's main events. Sometimes they even influence those events in subtle ways - for example, the attempt to rescue Princess Leia succeeds in part because librarian Atour Riten secretly overrides the security locks on the detention center elevators.

This sort of thing isn't revisionism per se, but it's still an attention to minutiae that probably wouldn't justify an entire novel. However, as it turns out, the book's not really about the Death Star at all. Which is fortunate given that you probably know what happened to it. Rather, it's about a group of people either in service to the Empire or indifferent towards it, their exposure to the true monstrosity of Palpatine and his servants, and their response. Reaves and Perry stress that none of our protagonists think the Empire will ever use the Death Star (theoretically, its mere existence is enough to end the war) but of course, they're proven wrong. And in the aftermath of Alderaan's destruction - finally given due gravitas - the various clusters of characters start to come together and form a conspiracy. And while they're not the most profound bunch, our heroes are sympathetic enough that I became invested in their stories, which is more than I can say for about ninety percent of the Expanded Universe's population.

"Death Star" is a welcome alternative to the traditional depiction of the Empire as a faceless, anonymous hive-mind mass represented by singular villains like Vader or the Emperor; there have been "street-level" stories about the Empire before, but the perspective was always from the outside, someone who was victimized by Imperial aggression. This may actually be the first story in over thirty years that humanizes the Empire. And that's no small feat indeed.

VGM: Great Indeed

2009-06-21T21:24:00.000-07:00

OverClocked Remix recently posted a vocal mix of Final Fantasy IX's "Rose of May", by katethegreat19 (AKA Kate Covington). The name is appropriate: it's a very impressive arrangement, as Covington has an excellent voice and her Celtic-esque style fits the song perfectly. Turns out she's done quite a few covers from the "Final Fantasy" series, all worth listening to:

Suteki da ne
Aeris' Theme
You're Not Alone
Hymn of the Fayth
Melodies of Life
The Place I'll Return To Someday

More Game Reviews

2009-05-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

I wasn't much surprised to learn that A Vampyre Story was created by a group of developers who'd previously worked at LucasArts: it's very much a part of the tradition established by adventure games like the "Monkey Island" series, "Day of the Tentacle" and "Sam & Max Hit The Road". You play the part of Mona, a French opera singer abducted by the vampire Baron von Shrowdy. Turns out Shrowdy did more than just kidnap her, as she can now turn into a bat and the sight of a crucifix sends her into convulsions; but Mona remains in denial about her situation, insisting that she's simply developed a taste for warm, salty, thick red Merlot. Along with her wisecracking sidekick, a bat named Froderick, Mona has to find a way out of Shrowdy's castle and into the nearby village, in the hopes of curing her "condition".

If it weren't for the graphics, I'd think I was playing a game from the mid-'90s. And that's not a negative comment: "A Vampyre Story" plays like something from the height of the adventure game genre. It's got an amusing script, it's comfortable to play, you can't get permanently stuck, and the puzzles range from easy to complicated without tipping over into You'd Damn Well Better Have A Walkthrough. Voice talent is a bit of column A and a bit of column B: though Mona herself is unbearably shrill, the Jersey-accented crypt rats and Shrowdy's channeling of Peter Lorre (among others) suit the comedic atmosphere perfectly.

The drawback? Length: the story stops at an arbitrary point, just as things are getting interesting. Now, this was ostensibly done to set up the sequel, and it's a tactic that seems to be getting more and more popular ("Starcraft II" will apparently have only one campaign, with expansion packs to follow), but as a result what you get here is an incomplete story with only two settings: Shrowdy's castle and the village. Granted, both locations are large enough to keep you busy, but I seriously doubt you'll get any closure once you complete the last puzzle. It might be better to hold off on playing this game for now, at least until the sequel comes out (no release date yet).

And now, a Microids marathon! Without realizing it, I ended up playing three adventure games from this French company in rapid succession.

Let's start with 2002's Syberia. As Kate Walker, an American lawyer, you must set out on a journey across Eastern Europe to find the long-lost heir of a toy factory, uncovering the legacies he left behind in the process.

Visually, "Syberia" is absolutely beautiful: designer Benoit Sokal went all-out to create stunningly detailed environments, from the pristine university of Barrockstadt to the desolate, rusted ruins of Komkolzgrad. Each location leads you to discover pre-eletronic mechanical wonders created by Hans Voralberg, the object of your quest - wonders that are often as meticulously detailed as the settings.

By the time you complete the second area, though, you'll probably figure out the game's biggest weakness: there's minimal character interaction. Kate spends most of her time alone, occasionally receiving a phone call from her friends and family back in New York (these ultimately prove to be significant to Kate's character arc, such as it is, but they're scattered at random intervals). The only other character you consistently interact with is Oscar, an automaton designed to run the train you're riding - and the whole point of his character is that he can't deviate from his programming, so... yeah. Not exactly the most engaging partner. Every other character is just a stock piece that's meant to present (or complicate) whatever objective you're working on; this becomes especially blatant in the epilogue, when Sergei does an abrupt about-face just because the game demands one last puzzle before proceeding. Despite lovely graphics, the story rings a little hollow, especially once the whole Syberia/Mammoth Island bit works its way in (wait, we're supposed to take that seriously?).

Post Mortem, released in 2003, is a step in the right direction: it's a murder mystery with an engaging protagonist straight out of the noir tradition. Gus McPherson was a private eye working in New York until something bad happened (we never learn more about his past, which is appropriate given the atmosphere). He moved to Paris and tried to become a painter, at which point Sophia Blake, a typical femme fatale, knocks on Gus' door and demands he solve the grotesque murder of her sister Ruby.

So far so good... but right at the very beginning of the game you're going to notice two very annoying flaws in the gameplay. First, there is no way to skip dialogue or cinematics. At all. This might not seem like such a big deal until you take it in conjunction with the other problem: the dialogue tree.

Like many adventure games, your interactions with the various characters of "Post Mortem" take the form of dialogue trees: you choose a line of dialogue out of several, and the conversation continues in that vein. You're usually able to go back and select other lines in the course of the talk, to get as much information out of the other character as you can.

Not so with "Post Mortem". To begin with, there's minimal causality in terms of the choices you're offered: you can actually ask Sophia about her sister's murder before she even tells you about the case. And there's no way to backtrack: if you say the wrong thing, or ask the wrong question at the wrong time, you'll have to find the information another way. (Which, I suppose, is a nice counterpoint to this problem: you can make mistakes, but the game will always offer you different opportunities to regain ground.) Since you can save anywhere, you might think that saving before any conversation would be the best way to properly navigate the dialogue tree... but since you can't skip dialogue, you'll be dooming yourself to repeating certain lines over and over again until you figure out the ideal sequence of options.

Unpleasant? Try doing all this with a first-person mouse-controlled camera. The good news is you'll never have reason to look up or down; the bad news? Try finding a pencil at a hundred paces. Not as bad as a pixel hunt, but getting there.

The plot holds its own for the first half of the game or so: as he investigates the various characters connected to the murder, Gus discovers the prime suspect is Jacques Helloin, a private detective who was working a very similar case right before Ruby's death. When you find Helloin, the game switches perspectives, allowing you to play as Helloin in an extended flashback, allowing you to basically set up the clues that Gus will later uncover. It's an interesting approach to the conventions of the mystery genre - it actually reminded me of "Fahrenheit" in that you were playing both the "criminal" and the detectives tracking him down.

The game also reminded me of "Fahrenheit" because an absurd supernatural twist comes out of nowhere shortly after the Helloin segment. Psychic visions, alchemy, an immortal who - surprise surprise - has connections to the Knights Templar (and if I never play another adventure game referencing the Knights Templar I'll be a happy woman), and a magical statue that transfers your mind into another body. Rather tellingly, the writers of "Post Mortem" try to have their cake and eat it too by providing an alternative, realistic explanation (ie: maybe the bad guy's just crazy and it's all in his head), but it's kind of late for that. Like SF, mysticism doesn't really work with the detective/noir genre (at the very least, I haven't seen it performed successfully yet), so the story just goes off the rails.

The same is emphatically not true of the sequel, Still Life. A major improvement over "Post Mortem", "Still Life" splits its story between Gus in 1920's Prague and his granddaughter Victoria in present-day Chicago, as they both seem to be investigating the same serial killer. As a protagonist, Victoria's quite entertaining, with a sharp tongue and enough wit to make you want to pursue every possible dialogue option with her. Gone is the awkward camera and the impossible-to-navigate dialogue tree: when speaking to other characters, left-clicking is for matters pertaining to the investigation (ie: what you need to hear to proceed with the game), while right-clicking (when available) will tell you a little bit more about the character - for example, Claire might mention some trouble she's having with her daughter. Not really relevant to the game plot, but it certainly gives you the option of fleshing out the cast.

The story is divided into seven chapters alternating between Victoria and Gus. I was quite happy to see that while Gus still suffers from utterly irrelevant psychic flashes, the possibility that he and Vic are chasing the same murderer is never raised. No hocus pocus here, thank you very much. A lot of supplementary exposition is relegated to the journals - in fact, Victoria can access both her own logs and Gus', which makes the growing similarities between their cases all the more evident.

The puzzles are much more complex here than in any predecessor of "Still Life" - lots of sliding tiles, navigating a robot through a laser maze, using fingerprints and Luminol to gather evidence... though, again, it's impossible to get yourself stuck, you might find yourself spending a lot of time trying to pick a complex lock by holding various tumblers apart at different intervals. Quite challenging.

Bad news: as with "A Vampyre Story", the conclusion of "Still Life" is quite unsatisfying, with countless loose ends left up in the air. Good news: "Still Life 2" was released a few weeks ago. I'm hoping to pick it up by next Friday so that I can continue Victoria's story...

So it looks like the adventure genre is alive and kicking! Good to know.

Dollhouse: Season in Review

2009-05-09T00:47:00.000-07:00

I'd love to say that sticking through to the end of the season has earned me some great insight into the nature - and problems - of "Dollhouse"... but the truth is, I'm as frustrated now as I was at the end of the pilot.

It's all well and good to run a relatively bold experiment in serial narrative: can you identify with a protagonist whose basic personality changes every episode? Can you have continuity without memory? Conceptually speaking, these are certainly interesting avenues for exploration.

Unfortunately, the sum has turned out to be considerably less than its parts.

The central moral issue (if you can call it that) in "Dollhouse" has to do, unsurprisingly, with the Dollhouse itself, and the way its Actives are used. Throughout the season, we were basically given three points of view represented by Paul Ballard, Adelle DeWitt and Topher Brink. Ballard sees the Dollhouse as an evil institution enslaving and pimping helpless victims, but he's also a slightly obsessive freak with a one-track mind whose investigate skills are, shall we say, slightly less than impressive. DeWitt wants to believe she's helping people, but more often than not things go horribly wrong (and she's kind of a hypocrite too). And finally, Topher doesn't much care about the moral implications of his work: he just likes playing with shiny toys and human brains.

In other words, there probably is a moral quandary here worth exploring, but none of the characters are capable of expressing that properly. And rather than remain neutral, the show seems to vacillate between taking the Dollhouse's side (ie: the traumatic revelations about Echo, Victor, November and Sierra in "Echoes", as well as Echo's innate desire to protect the Dollhouse in "Spy in the House of Love") and condemning it (because November's fate in the finale certainly looks like liberation in a uplifting sense).

The reason this is such a problem is because the Moral Issue is really the only thing that could even remotely qualify as an ongoing storyline. There's very little plot consistency: at best, the events of an episode will have consequences in the next one, but that's about it. Alpha is introduced, built up, and then forgotten until the penultimate episode; the threat of Echo snapping seems to appear and disappear whenever it's convenient, and so on. There was no sense of structure at all; the first five episodes seemed devoted entirely to world-building, with Whedon asking viewers to stick around a bit longer until the good stuff would kick in. And yes, later episodes improved somewhat, but none of the glaring flaws in this series were corrected (or, apparently, even noticed at all).

As for the season (possibly series) finale, "Omega"... well, I will say this for Whedon - he's still very good with misdirection, as the whole Whiskey revelation proves. And I enjoyed much of the dialogue. But now, a plea to all TV networks: can we have just one science-fiction series that doesn't engage in metaphysical mumbo-jumbo?! As soon as Ballard started talking about souls (and, guess what, he seems to be proven right given what Echo becomes) I just rolled my eyes and strongly resisted the urge to stop watching. Enough with the metaphors, enough with the childish navel-gazing, enough with invoking higher powers: just once, I would like to see a story that unfolds without invoking questions of divine intervention and the human spirit (literally).

I suppose the question of whether I'll be watching season 2 is moot, given the vultures circling over this show, but I'm going to have to chalk this up as another disappointment from Camp Whedon. And those are really starting to pile up. I do hope he comes out with something in the near future to remind me why I used to love his work...

Season in Review: Heroes S3

2009-04-29T23:14:00.000-07:00

I've probably made my feelings regarding "Heroes" rather clear by now, but it bears reiteration: this series has degenerated to such an extent that I jumped ship before the season ended. I've only ever done that once before, with "Lost"; typically, if a series jumps the shark, I hang on until the season finale on the outside chance it'll work out. If it's a show I've really enjoyed in the past, I might even hang around longer - I made it all the way to the series finale of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", despite the fact that every single week the show would leave me disappointed and frustrated at best, outraged at worst (Nathan Fillion as a misogynistic priest who won't shut up? Gee, thanks, Marti).

But "Heroes"... there's something about the way it's gone downhill that got to me. If I take a step back and look at all three seasons, a pattern seems to emerge as follows:

For the most part, the first season holds together under scrutiny both in terms of the Myth Arc and with regards to individual subplots. I'll grant that some characters' storylines were more satisfactory than others, but every plot development I can recall at the moment paid off in the end. And it was a good story, full of twists and drama and energy.

The second season still has a largely consistent Myth Arc - the story of Adam Monroe and the Elder Heroes - in that plot elements are set up, executed and followed upon. Characters still have reasonably straightforward directions. The difference here is that the story wasn't very good, especially in comparison to its predecessor: Adam wasn't as threatening as Sylar, the new characters (with the exception of Elle) were dull, and the backstory of the Primatech founders was painfully abbreviated and didn't add up to anything substantial. It was still coherent at this point, but not very engaging at all.

And then we come to the third season, in which the question I kept asking myself every week was "What's the point of this?" Because think about it: what was the point of Hiro's trip to India? What was the point of Ando getting powers? What was the point of Alex? What was the point of anything relating to Sylar whether it's Luke, his father or whatever? What was the point of Coyote Sands and Alice Shaw? I'm not even talking about the first half of the season, with Pinehearst and Arthur Petrelli and that insufferable Spider-Mohinder subplot. The reason this season was so awful - the reason I just couldn't stand to watch it anymore - is that not only were the individual elements of rather poor quality, but they didn't add up at all either. It's like a very ugly jigsaw puzzle except none of the pieces fit together anyway. Things happen, and then other things happen, and characters just go where the plot demands, and there's no apparent rhyme or reason to any of it.

If that reminds you of a certain non-reality island-related series... well, yes. And it's not a flattering comparison at all.

So I'm done with "Heroes". And I'm sorry about that, but not because of anything they've done over the last two seasons - rather, I'm sorry that it fell so far and wasted so much of its potential. Time to move on...

In Memoriam

2009-04-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

Goodbye, Ms. Arthur. Cliche though it may be to say this, thank you for being a friend.

Game Reviews

2009-04-26T00:16:00.000-07:00

Ever since I had my PC upgraded last month, I've been dipping my toe in higher-end games that didn't work with my previous system (that's one reason why I've spent so much time on DOS-era material).

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is the latest from Marvel, a third-person action game with a bit of a twist. Once a certain plot-related event is completed (fairly early in the game), you're given the ability to switch at will between Spider-Man's classic suit and the Black Symbiote. Unlike "X-Men Legends 2", where the difference in "skins" was cosmetic, your appearance has a real impact on how you play. In his original outfit, Spider-Man is fast and uses web-related attacks; the Black Suit slows you down but gives you a massive boost to strength, as well as the ability to project tentacles that can snag a target from across the street.

The graphics are astonishingly detailed, with a real sense of scale attached to the game's version of Manhattan: you get the feeling that every street and building in the city is right there, along with some famiilar fictional locations like the Daily Bugle and Stark Tower (continuity alert: it's got that bizarre Sentry-related hologram on top of it, which probably dates the game more than Marvel would like). It's the most realistic virtual representation of Manhattan that I've ever seen.

Gameplay can be a little confusing at first, but only because this is the closest emulation I've ever seen of Spider-Man as he appears in the comics: swift, agile, able to take down a dozen criminals without touching the ground, swinging between skyscrapers and bouncing off flagpoles... some battle sequences even take place entirely in midair. It's very easy to lose your sense of direction and get entirely turned around, especially since the camera changes angles every time Spidey sticks to a wall and starts climbing. But once you get the hang of it, it's a lot of fun.

Which isn't to say the system's entirely without kinks. For starters, the auto-targeting feature has an annoying habit of locking onto random objects regardless of what you're actually aiming for; in a regular fight, that's not such a big deal, but having your attacks directed at minions in the middle of a boss fight? Irritating.

Another problem has to do with the various missions you receive throughout the game. You'll initially want to complete every objective, even the optional ones, since you're rewarded with points you can use to unlock additional skills. But it doesn't take much to max out both suits' capabilities, and you don't have much incentive to follow the "side-quests" after that. It doesn't help that the objectives tend to be repetitive: save 5 civilians, save 20 civilians, save 150 civilians, etc. At some point I just decided to get on with the main assignments.

The plot's not much to write home about, though that's where you'll find the twist I mentioned: after a confusing prologue (later revealed to be a flash-forward), the game starts by pitting you against street gangs and the Kingpin. But the plot takes off in the second act, as Venom starts infecting people with symbiotes and SHIELD responds, turning Manhattan into a war zone.

Here's the interesting thing, though: at various points in the storyline, you're presented with a choice between the Red Path and the Black Path. The Red Path is typical superhero fare: subdue an enemy without excessive violence, choose your long-time girlfriend over your sexy-but-amoral partner, wielding great power with great responsibility, etc. The Black Path sees Spider-Man being corrupted by the power of the Symbiote, gradually becoming darker and darker until he finally starts killing his enemies. The story develops in rather different ways depending on your decisions. There's an alignment meter that charts your current situation, though as far as I can tell the only gameplay-related effect this has is to limit your choice of allies: as you progress through the game, you gain the ability to summon backup in the form of Luke Cage, Moon Knight and Wolverine, as well as Black Cat, Vulture, Rhino and Electro. Obviously, the heroes won't help you if you go dark, and the villains won't turn up if you stick with the good guys.

All in all, it's a fun game; not very long, even with two play-throughs to cover the different paths, but it'll definitely hold your attention while it lasts.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest is also a third-person action game, based primarily on the Peter Jackson films. The player is able to choose from four classes - Warrior, Archer, Scout and Mage - each with his own strengths and weaknesses. You must then navigate various locations seen in both the novels and the films (ie: Rivendell, the Pelennor Fields, the Shire) and follow various objectives; the challenge, of course, is figuring out which class is best suited for those goals. For example, if you have to carry an object from Point A to Point B, your best bet is the Scout, as he can maintain an invisible cloak for a certain amount of time. On the other hand, if you need to fend off waves of enemies in close quarters, you're better off with a Warrior. You can switch classes at various "safe zones" in each level.

Almost every mission unlocks a Hero character as you near its end: these range from Aragorn to Gandalf to Sauron himself. Though these heroes may seem impressive, they're actually just more powerful versions of the pre-existing classes, with largely the same abilities. And, oddly enough, they're just as vulnerable to the various "instant kill" traps as anyone else, so Sauron can get picked up and eaten by an Ent just as easily as a common Orc. Also, only Mages can heal, so if you're stuck with a Hero from another class, you have to be as cautious as you would in regular scenarios. I thought that sort of defeated the purpose of having these heroes, being able to finish various missions with style, but...

Anyway, at first you can only play through the Good campaign, which is basically a retread of the films: you go from Helm's Deep to Moria to Minas Morgul, and finally go up against the Mouth of Sauron at the Black Gate. But once you complete the Good campaign, you unlock its Evil counterpart, an alternate-history version where Frodo dies at Mount Doom and the Nazgul reclaim the One Ring. Revitalized, the forces of Mordor turn the tables on their enemies and sweep across Middle-Earth. Here's another quirk, though: both campaigns rely on cinematic cutscenes taken directly from the films, which means the Evil campaign basically consists of various clips taken out of context. Hugo Weaving's narration helps with that, but it's still kind of a stretch. CGI might've been more appropriate.

Like "Web of Shadows", little effort was put into creating real variety for the missions here: regardless of the campaign, you're pretty much tasked with slaughtering never-ending waves of enemies while moving from Point A to Point B. Again, it's certainly a lot of fun to play, but you won't find much to keep you going after that.

Season in Review: Battlestar Galactica S4

2009-04-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

It's taken me a considerable amount of time to get my head together regarding the final season of "Battlestar Galactica"; to be honest, I'm still feeling a bit conflicted regarding the series' conclusion.

I'm always a bit sad when an amazing, well-written series goes downhill. "Heroes" has recently become so insufferable that I've finally dropped it mid-season, which I've only ever done once before ("Lost", towards the end of season 2). For perspective's sake, I stuck by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to the bitter, bitter end, long after it went from bad to offensively bad. I suppose that's my preference for modular storytelling coming to the forefront: if a serial narrative starts to go sour, I'd rather wait for a proper jumping-off point so I can get some kind of closure. This is also a useful approach for older series, because you can avoid the Jumping of the Shark altogether if you know where to stop. Going further back, the end of season 2 was the best place to quit "Party of Five", because it was the happiest ending that miserable family would ever get.

The thing about jumping the shark, though, is that most of the time - especially in television - the downward trend can't be reversed. Once you cross that line, everything just slides further and further down, or it'll move laterally: the sixth season of "Buffy" was nauseating, the seventh was just plain stupid (or maybe I'd just gotten used to the Vortex of Eww by that point, I don't know).

But there's always a measure of consistency, and if we take my most recent example again, the second season of "Heroes" was bad, sure, but it had some kind of basic structure and almost every character still maintained a measure of appeal held over from the first season. Conversely, the current storyline is a jumbled, useless mess without a single sympathetic focalizer in the entire cast.

That's the pattern I consider to be represented fairly strongly in mainstream media. And it doesn't apply to "Battlestar Galactica". Because depending on your interpretation, it either jumps the shark at the start of the fourth season and then recovers, or it jumps the shark in the last five minutes of the series finale, or it doesn't jump at all and the intense backlash is coming from somewhere else entirely.

As I've mentioned in my talks with Kazekage both here and at the Witless Prattle, I think the problem with BSG - going all the way back to the Kobol storyline of season 1 - is that the series ended up gelling into two very different (and practically antithetical) stories. On the one hand, you had "realistic" character-centric science-fiction (or Syphy as I understand it's being called now): the Pegasus, life in the Fleet, the Mutiny, Lee and Kara, Kat's redemption, Dee giving up, Roslin's hand trembling at her inauguration, Adama waiting for her in a Raptor, Baltar's trial and so on. Stories about people. About who they are, why they do what they do, about their pain and fear and love.

And then you had the pseudo-religious story. The Lords of Kobol. God's plan. Oracles. Bob Dylan music. Angels. Hybrid-speak. The living dead. A view of the universe where every single event can be (and is) attributed to one (or more) omnipotent, perpetually-unknown higher power(s) whose aims and desires are completely unknown.

Needless to say, these approaches don't co-exist comfortably, and that schism bothered me from the very beginning. But up until the aftermath of New Caprica, it was tolerable because there was no obvious preference for one or the other: Roslin might be having prophetic visions or she might be having drug-induced hallucinations that just happen to coincide with actual events. U Decide.

But once you got to the Eye of Jupiter story, the divide between religion and... hell, let's just call it realism for the sake of terminology... that divide started to filter into the actual structure of the season. Entire episodes were devoted exclusively either to God's Plan or to the women and men of the Fleet. And nowhere does this become more evident than the fourth and final season.

It began with "Razor", a feature film that leaves absolutely no room for amorphous pseudo-mythology: it's the True Story of the Pegasus as seen through the eyes of Kendra Shaw, the last survivor of Admiral Cain's inner circle. Needless to say, I really enjoyed it: we get to see the Fall from another, much darker perspective - because Cain didn't have a Roslin figure to keep her grounded - and through Shaw we can also see exactly how the crew of the Pegasus became what they were by the time they met Galactica. It's a human story.

Unfortunately, we then get ten straight episodes of people chasing visions and spouting prophecies. Baltar, Roslin, Starbuck, Caprica-Six, the Final Five, all running after cryptic half-assed riddles, following "hunches" that miraculously work out for the best... and unlike earlier seasons, there's no rational explanation that can serve as an alternative if you're not inclined to do the whole God Mode thing. How does Starbuck know where Earth is? She just does. She can feel it. Why? Nobody knows.

Meanwhile, we have the Cylon Civil War, culminating in the destruction of the Resurrection Hub. I'm torn about that particular story: it certainly diminished the threat (and unique nature) of the Cylons, but it also highlighted the central contradiction of their existence - namely, that the peak of their self-evolution is represented by human replicas with human personalities. Caprica-Six falls in love, D'Anna's a zealot, Cavil's a bitter old man, Boomer always wants something other than what she has, and so on. They're not Terminators who only look like people: take away their resurrection and there's no real difference between the Cylons and the Colonial survivors at all. And that's a really original way to resolve this sort of conflict, especially in science-fiction where wars typically end with one side obliterating the other.

Still, for the first half of the last season, the dominant arc was God's/Gods' Plan(s). And then we got to Earth, and everything snapped back into focus. No more invisible people, no more prophecies, no more Hybrid babble, just a sudden and horrible lapse into bleak depression. And it's brutally effective, dramatically speaking, because we've been with these characters for years. We've seen them suffer, we've seen them die, and we believed it'd all work out for them in the end, that they'd find Earth and it would be worth the price they paid.

Which leads to the Mutiny and its aftermath - again, a story about the people. It's about Gaeta driven by guilt and paranoia, and Zarek finally making his move, and Tyrol bleeding for his ship, and Roslin taking a stand with a voice that still gives me goosebumps (seriously, Mary McDonnell did some outstanding work on this show and I hope to see her in another central dramatic role again very soon). We also have Ellen and Sam giving us partial answers about the Final Five which surprisingly held up under scrutiny.

I think the turning point, for me, was "Someone To Watch Over Me". It's the episode that promised an answer to what was probably the biggest mystery left on the show by that point: the Question of Starbuck. Or, to be more elaborate: Kara Thrace followed a vision into a gas giant. Her Viper exploded. Months later and light-years away, she turns up again and rejoins the Fleet, having gone all the way to Earth and back in the interrim. She's not a Cylon. So how did she do it?

To understand why this episode bothers me so much, I need to go back to the exposition-heavy "No Exit", where Ellen Tigh reveals that there had been a thirteenth Cylon model, Number Seven, whom she'd named Daniel. She describes him as a sensitive artist. The Sevens had apparently been exterminated by Cavil prior to the banishment of the Final Five and the fall of the Colonies. Two episodes later, Kara has an extended hallucination of her father, and eventually ends up playing a song he taught her as a child - the Final Five recognize it as the same Music that "activated" them at the end of the previous season.

The dots practically connect themselves: a Daniel model survives, fathers Kara, teaches her the song he learned from the Five. Kara dies and gets resurrected somewhere near Earth, which explains the gap in her memories. And maybe someone helped her get back to the Fleet, et cetera.

Within the context of this fictional universe's logic, that's a reasonable explanation. And then Ron Moore, series creator, goes on a podcast and tells everyone that no, that's not it at all, there's no significance to the Daniel story except highlighting what an asshole Cavil is. Never mind that Moore never actually answers the Question of Starbuck, except to say that she's "whatever you want her to be" (THAT'S NOT AN ANSWER).

At that point, there were only three episodes to go, and it became pretty clear to me that the two parallel tracks - realism and religion - were about to collide. And one would emerge to define the series as a whole.

I want to skip ahead to the finale at this point. I've already talked about it, but I think it still warrants discussion because... well, up to a point, the finale served the characters: Racetrack gets post-mortem revenge on the Cylons, Boomer makes her last choice, Helo and Athena and Hera get to be a family at last, the Colonials find their new home... and I'll admit that I cried during Laura Roslin's last scene. It just broke my heart despite the fact that I'd known her story would end that way, prophecy or no prophecy.

And if the show had ended with that last shot of Adama at Roslin's grave, ready to build that cabin he promised her, it'd be great. I could handwave the little things that bothered me: sending the Fleet into the sun? Well, that would ensure that no one (read: the enemy Cylons) would ever find the Colonials again. Letting the Centurions go? Eh. Maybe they finally got over the whole genocide thing.

But there's a coda. And I honestly believe that coda is singularly responsible for my mixed feelings, for the very vocal post-finale backlash... all of it. The coda jumps forward 150,000 years and reveals that the Colonials' new home is, in fact, our home: that Hera is our Mitochondrial Eve, and Virtual Six and Virtual Baltar are walking among us, wondering if the cycle of violence is going to begin again, because we're experimenting with artificial "life" and we're probably going to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that Moore probably didn't intend to send the astonishingly Luddite message that the coda puts out there - an anti-technology warning set to the tune of Jimi Hendrix's "All Along The Watchtower". The larger problem, of course, is that this coda completely demolishes the realistic track of the series: the story of "Battlestar Galactica" isn't about the people after all, because if their world is our world then they were totally erased. And even if we're meant to infer that we got some traits from them, like the Olympian pantheon and monotheism, the history of Earth-born humanity doesn't quite suit the Colonials' optimstic tones in the pre-coda scenes. The cycle of violence is, sadly, very much alive and kicking. And yet the Virtuals are patting themselves on the back, praising God's Plan. Which means "Battlestar Galactica" was about God's Plan after all.

And... yeah, that's not what I was expecting. In fact, that's very much the opposite of what I wanted to see, and I can't help feeling a bit "betrayed" - as if Moore pulled a stealthy bait-and-switch to get me to swallow a religious parable while thinking I was getting character-centric realism.

I honestly wish I could just write the whole show off, because that ending is such a turn-off... but I can't. Because when it was on - and it was on for most of its run - it was probably the best drama on TV. I just wish Moore had allowed us to celebrate the conclusion in the same tradition as the rest of the story: if you want to ascribe religious machinations, you can do that, but there's also a perfectly reasonable explanation if you're so inclined.

Ah well. An excellent series with an intensely problematic ending... it is what it is. Of course, now that it's over and "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" is ending and "Dollhouse" is hanging by a thread, I seem to have run out of science-fiction series. All at the same time, more or less. I wonder whether there's a broader implication for that with regards to generic trends in American television...

Quoted for truth

2009-04-10T23:09:00.000-07:00

From the brilliant Al Kennedy over at House to Astonish:

"Dan DiDio says in order to know about Wally West, you need to know about Barry Allen. And that's such a fanboy way of looking at it, because it presumes that everything is important, it presumes that Barry Allen is important because he was the first Flash and you need to have him involved somehow. Just give Wally West Barry Allen's origin, he gets struck by lightning next to all these chemicals, he's the Flash. Who cares?"

On the matter of Pirate(d) Wolverine...

2009-04-06T13:19:00.001-07:00

No, I'm not going to download the leaked version of "Wolverine: Origins".

No, I'm not going to see it in theatres either.

I might pick up the DVD because I adore Hugh Jackman, and Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool is so off-the-wall it just might work. But I don't have any particularly burning need to do so - I've already seen Wolverine's origin eighty billion times, and 80,000,000,001 is not my magic number.

I don't make this kind of post very often...

2009-04-01T13:01:00.001-07:00

... but after spending the last half-hour laughing helplessly, I figured this deserves all the hype as it can get.

The Passover Haggadah Goes To Facebook

My favorite part: "Will you guys stop running up the score?! You already won! Just stop!"

Hilarious.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6h

2009-03-29T02:40:00.000-07:00

Today we'll be concluding our stay in Rob Caves' fan-series universe, with a review of the three Star Trek: Hidden Frontier spin-offs.

The first thing worth mentioning is that there's a plot superstructure in place here, which I honestly didn't expect: all three spin-offs use the same event as a launching point, though they each go in very different directions. The event in question is the invasion of Romulan space by the Archein Empire, hailing from the Andromeda Galaxy. "Odyssey" follows a Starfleet crew stranded in Archein territory; "The Helena Chronicles" is set in the former Briar Patch; and "Federation One" explores the political fallout of the invasion. In the background of the latter two, Section 31 - a black ops splinter group of Starfleet - is conspiring to do... well, something. It's not entirely clear yet.

The internal post-HF chronology is a bit tricky. While "Odyssey" stands independent of its sister series, the prequels to "Federation One" take place between episodes 2 and 3 of "The Helena Chronicles". In fact, it's been suggested that the best way to view the spin-offs is to combine them into one season - the numbers work out, as "Odyssey" has five episodes, "The Helena Chronicles" has three and "Federation One" has two (plus a pair of prequels), so it just about comes up to one of the longer seasons of "Hidden Frontier". However, the three series are so thematically different that I advise against that kind of amalgamation.

I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed that the central hub of the post-HF narrative is yet another war story. Granted, the Archein attack is much more compelling and interesting than either of the major conflicts in "Hidden Frontier", but it would've been nice to see something different. I understand that war's in the zeitgeist (just look at the Marvel Universe over the past five or six years) but it's wearing a bit thin, especially in a science-fiction setting that's always had a... complicated relationship with the concept of war.

Visually, there's been an incredible surge upward in terms of CGI quality and screen resolution; the final seasons of "Hidden Frontier" looked good, but I can honestly describe the current efforts of Caves and associates as "professional-level quality".

So let's get to it, then:

Odyssey comes first, mostly because its series premiere ("Iliad") seems to take place immediately after the "Hidden Frontier" finale: Ro and Aster are on their honeymoon, and it's implied that the Romulans are having trouble fending off the Archein due to their losses in the Briar Patch war.

The pilot episode does a great job of establishing the Archein as a very different threat than the Tholian/Breen alliance of "Hidden Frontier" - we have specific characters within this enemy organization such as the demented princess Seram, her dying mother, the honorable but determined General Morrigu and so on. Moreover, the Archein are given a strong, rational explanation for their attack: their home systems in the Andromeda galaxy are collapsing into singularities, and their only hope for survival is to seize and colonize the Beta Quadrant (specifically, Romulan territory).

Without spoiling too much, the premise of the series involves the Odyssey, a Starfleet vessel deployed to Andromeda through new (and apparently dangerous) slipstream technology, to stop the invasion at its source. Though successful, the Odyssey finds itself stranded deep within the Archein Empire, struggling to find a way home.

Well, it's "Voyager", obviously... albeit with a few correctives applied. For example, it's acknowledged rather plainly that, being three million light years away from Earth, there's no conventional way for the Odyssey to get home. The inter-character dynamics are also different, as junior officers like Ro are forced to assume command positions following the deaths of the senior staff.

The only characters imported from "Hidden Frontier" are Ro, our central protagonist, and bit character Wozniak (Rawlins' replacement from the fourth season). Everyone else is tabula rasa, though the series features many of the same actors such as Sharon Savene (Faisal/Seram), Julia Morizawa (S'Tal/Maya), John Whiting (Henglaar/Morrigu), Michelle Laurent (Tesla Mor/T'Lorra) and Adam Browne (Zen/Caecus). Some, like Morizawa, are clearly having fun playing characters so different from their previous roles; others can't help a certain level of bleed-through (Caecus is every bit the timid mouse Jorian was in his pre-Dao days).

But if we're talking actors here, the big news is that the part of Ro Nevin has been recast again - though Bobby Rice reprises the role in the first episode, he's then replaced by Brandon McConnell. It's a striking change, because McConnell is much more emotionally reserved; this is somewhat justified in that Ro should have developed some kind of stability by now, having gone through all that emotional uncertainty in the final seasons of "Hidden Frontier". On the other hand, Rice's version of the character was an open book, you could always tell what he was thinking and feeling, and I don't get that with Ro 3.0. But McConnell's new to the role... we'll have to wait and see where that goes.

Characterization has improved since "Hidden Frontier" but remains a bit off: I find myself constantly wanting to see more of these characters, to go beneath the surface and see what makes them tick, but the first season of "Odyssey" doesn't deliver much of that. Oh, there are quite a few likeable characters: Maya's fun, Gillen is just adorable, and T'Lorra's an excellent foil for Ro. But there's still something missing, that little extra bit that makes a character memorable.

The plot also gets a bit repetitive after a while; nearly every episode involves Ro getting the ship into trouble by setting off a trap, while encountering alien cultures that have inexplicably learned all about Bajorans, Romulans and Starfleet. There's a Kirk reference in there somewhere, which makes me wonder whether the whole Andromeda thing has actually been done before, but I can't seem to find any solid reference one way or another.

Still, I like the core concept and certain twists, like Seram's true connection to Caecus, were well-executed. All it really needs is a bit more depth of characterization and some new storyline ideas. Of course, what I'd really like to know is whether the writers intend to follow the broad outline of Homer's poem, because Ro succumbing to an Andromedan (male?) analogue of Circe probably wouldn't go over with viewers as smoothly as Odysseus' Old-School Mattress Marathon, but it'd certainly serve his character arc.

The Helena Chronicles picks up six months after "Iliad", in a more familiar setting (Ba'ku and what used to be Briar Patch). We're following the Helena, commanded by Theresa Faisal (former XO to Tolian Naros). Jorian Dao is first officer, Artim Ibanya is helmsman, and Corey Aster joins the crew in the series premiere (basically providing the Penelope to Ro's Odysseus). We even get to peek in on DS12 (though this comes with an unwelcome dose of Knapp - I suppose someone had to hold the Idiot Ball), and the second episode brings back Joseph Johns (the last surviving member of Admiral Cole's crew), Robin Lefler and Admiral Rand.

Which isn't to say that we don't get a bunch of entertaining new characters, such as Chief Engineer Rockney (a technophile in the creepiest sense of the word), the semi-psychotic Lt. Dais, snarky Dr. Ness or the flamboyant pirate Caeleno. As with "Odyessy", I'm left wanting to know more about these characters, but with the first season consisting of only three episodes, there isn't much room for development.

I should point out, apropos of characterization, that there's a real effort being made here to push Ro and Aster as an epic romance - they're having visions of each other, they're acting out the parts of mythological figures, but even after all this time... eh. Still not feeling 'em, dawg.

Meanwhile, if the premise of "Odyssey" remains consistent throughout its first season, "The Helena Chronicles" does an abrupt - but entirely welcome - left-field twist in the second episode, as Lefler, Aster and Dao start experimenting on ways to either follow Ro to Andromeda or bring him home. I'm not entirely clear on why the reaction to their work is so hysterical, since it's already been done in the very recent past, but if you can make the leap that Starfleet is willing to murder its own officers to prevent some kind of unexplained galactic catastrophe, you'll be okay with the new, and rather bold, direction.

And finally, we have Federation One, a very different creature altogether. The series begins with two prequels - "Orphans of War" and feature-length "Operation Beta Shield" - both of which are crossovers with Scottish fan production Star Trek: Intrepid. This isn't actually the first time these two fan series have crossed paths: the fifth-season finale of "Hidden Frontier" featured a cameo by "Intrepid" character Keran Azhan. But in the context of the episode, it was a rather superfluous appearance.

Not so here: both the Intrepid and Shelby's Excalibur are front-and-center in both prequels, and they actually mesh rather well together. Shelby has a playful rapport with Captain Hunter, and that's a side of her we've never really seen - her friendship with Lefler is, after all, offset by her status as Lefler's commanding officer.

(Speaking of Lefler, it turns out she's engaged to Ben Nordstrom, the Excelsior's new Chief Engineer. It's yet another relationship that's taken place almost entirely off-screen...)

"Orphans of War" is a short ten-minute piece about the Intrepid and the Excelsior picking through the debris of an Archein/Romulan battle and finding some surprises left behind; servicable, but the real story begins with "Operation Beta Shield". Here's where the chronology gets a bit tricky: "Orphans of War" is set before the game-changing second episode of "The Helena Chronicles", but "Operation Beta Shield" takes place afterwards - this explains Lefler's absence and Barrett's promotion to first officer of the Excelsior (which has a new and interesting look).

"Operation Beta Shield" gives us a look at the political effects of the Archein attack and the resulting rescue of the Romulan Empire by Starfleet and the Klingons. It also marks the return of my favorite "Hidden Frontier" villain, Karah Vindenpawl, who rises to the most powerful position in the Federation through a sudden and violent assassination that she may (or may not) have instigated. As in fifth-season episode "Security Counsel", Vindenpawl brings out the best in Matt McCabe, who's still determined to expose and defeat her even as her machinations take on galactic proportions.

All of which leads to "Federation One", as McCabe - now Head of Presidential Security - tries to investigate Vindenpawl while simultaneously being forced to protect her against external and internal threats. It is, in that sense, a much more subtle series than either its sister shows; McCabe is the only Starfleet officer in a cast of politicians, reporters and scientists, and the focus veers away from space battles and the physical/visual manifestations of war. This, by the way, probably explains the season 2 format switch to audio drama: that sort of thing wouldn't work with either of the other spin-offs, but I suspect it'll do nicely here.

Normally, this would be the point where I'd make a comparative assessment and try to determine which series is "best", but I don't think it's so much a case of being qualitatively better as it is that each spin-off compliments the others: "Federation One" has the best character dynamics, since it's mostly just Vindenpawl and McCabe and they've had the benefit of exposure in the parent series. The Helena's story, on the other hand, is much more kinetic and exciting, while Odyssey... well, Odyssey has the potential to do a lot of new and interesting things but that hasn't really happened yet.

One thing I can say, with a great degree of confidence, is that "Odyssey", "The Helena Chronicles" and "Federation One" continue the tradition of gradual overall improvement that their parent series demonstrated; as with the later seasons of "Hidden Frontier", my feeling is that there are certain gaps and flaws that repeat themselves (mostly to do with plot and characterization techniques), but these diminish over time.

Some thoughts about yesterday's TV

2009-03-21T07:41:00.001-07:00

I expect I'll have more to say once I've fully digested the events of "Daybreak" and look back on the final season, but "Battlestar Galactica" is over, and... yes, I feel a loss. For all that I disagreed with the increasing pseudo-mysticism, for all that I found the finale's ultimate message problematic, for all that the unresolved questions left me deeply disappointed, the truth is I was in love with these characters, these remarkably complex and flawed and compelling people; with Adama and Roslin and Lee and Kara and Cottle and Helo, with everyone who made it to the end and everyone who didn't. Yes, even Baltar. I loved them all, and I'll miss them terribly.

Meanwhile, the sixth episode of "Dollhouse" aired yesterday. For context's sake, this was the episode Joss Whedon flagged as being of interest to those viewers who, like myself, were having mixed reactions (at best) to his newest project. According to Whedon, all we had to do was wait until episode 6 for the show to start hitting its stride.

I'll get to the actual episode in a bit, but that kind of request annoys me. I mean, isn't it unreasonable to expect your audience to just patiently hold their breath for a month while you get your act together? I'm not saying it's unheard-of for series to improve over time - even within Whedon's own filmography, the second season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was superior to the first - and patience is certainly rewarding when it comes to the slow-burning plot.

But there has to be some kind of baseline appeal that transcends the problems, that makes you want to hang around. "Dollhouse" doesn't have that, for reasons I've already discussed, and the only reason I'm still watching is because Whedon's got a lot of goodwill stored up with me. But that won't last forever.

Especially since the much-hyped sixth episode is good, but not great. Don't get me wrong, it is a very different creature: Ballard is pushed much closer to the spotlight, there's a lot of physical action (the kitchen fight scene was rather good) and our attention is finally shifted away from the inconsequential missions (the whole conceit of the show is that nothing the Dolls do matter, so why then have we been following their "engagements" so thoroughly?). And it's somewhat amusing that this episode aired the same day as the "Battlestar Galactica" finale, because "Dollhouse" also seems to be working the whole "Sleeper Agent" bit; we now have two characters who've turned out to be Dolls hiding in plain sight. And we're only six episodes in.

I don't know... I'll admit the sixth episode is an improvement, but I still don't feel like I need to know what happens next. While I'm all for experimental, postmodern approaches to fiction, I don't think Whedon is able to circumvent the very real need for a hook, a reason to tune in next week. And so far, that hasn't turned up. At my most charitable, I'm still only mildly curious about the future of this show.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6g

2009-03-15T01:47:00.000-07:00

To sum up, some macro-level observations about "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier".

As a fan-series, "Hidden Frontier" has an interesting and somewhat contradictory relationship with its source material. On the one hand, Rob Caves and his associates explored themes that neither Roddenberry nor Berman and Braga dealt with at length (or at all), such as homosexuality, clinical depression, drug addiction and the deeper implications of interracial relationships. That's the sort of thing you'd expect from a fan-based project, since the lack of a censoring authority means freedom to depict any controversial concepts the mainstream would've avoided. And in a way, that approach is very much in line with the most basic premise of "Star Trek" - to go where no one's gone before.

On the other hand, if we look at the overall narrative of "Hidden Frontier", what emerges is a story that doesn't really conform to "Star Trek" at all. It's clear that the series was heavily influenced by the Dominion War arc of "Deep Space 9", but that arc also had a spiritual/metaphysical dimension (the thing with Sisko and the Big Book of Evil, which I suspect was the long-lost eighth Harry Potter novel). Once Siroc comes into play, "Hidden Frontier" becomes a war epic to the exclusion of all other storylines, and there is no additional dimension to that conflict.

Moreover, it's not a war between two collective identities or ideologies - in DS9, you had certain characters who represented the factions, like Weyoun and Dukat, but the Briar Patch Wars are fought against Siroc and his cohorts on an individual level, with the Tholians and the Breen minimalized to the point of eventually becoming irrelevant altogether. And... well, that's more along the lines of "Star Wars", isn't it? With the Empire of Evil British White Guys just being an extension of the Alpha Villain? Think of that last celebratory scene in "Return of the Jedi" - the Emperor's death is equated with the death of the Empire as a whole. Hell, even the Expanded Universe could never shake this need to associate the entire Empire with a single figurehead, whether it was Grand Admiral Thrawn or Daala or Darth Krayt. And that's Siroc's function here: everything revolves around his actions and agendas.

But Siroc only rose to prominence in the fourth season; what about before that? Well, the main antagonists for the first three seasons of "Hidden Frontier" were the Grey Confederacy, an ill-defined race that seemed to combine the strong points of the Federation's two greatest opponents in the 24th century - like the Dominion, the Grey were a consortium of races all dominated by the psychic Ethereals; like the Borg, the Grey take over the minds of their victims and their ships can regenerate over time.

Unfortunately, the Grey failed because where Siroc was a highly specific and individualized enemy, the Grey are too anonymous, too vague. They have no voice, no personality, no real communication with their enemies - even the Borg had their infamous catchphrases ("You will be assimilated, resistance is futile"). In seven seasons we learn nothing of value regarding the Grey themselves: their member races, their philosophies, their motivations. They just turn up as a plot-required wild card whenever needed.

Moving on to another issue: time. I mentioned during the sixth season review that the series develops a timeline problem by equating each previous season with a year of story-time, so that the Federation had been fighting the Grey for three years before Siroc showed up, and that conflict lasted another four years.

Carlos Pedraza makes an interesting point about the perception of time in this particular fan-series: the episodes were produced at intervals of roughly two months, which meant that in real time the series had lasted for seven years. The assumption (which becomes explicit in the last two seasons) is that viewers who were watching the series as it was being produced would equate real time and narrative time.

But I disagree with that assumption, simply because "Hidden Frontier" is a visual narrative - and like all visual narratives, time only passes if we see it pass. It's certainly legitimate to pull an occasional time jump, with or without a "Two/Five/Ten Years Later" tag; however, I strongly doubt real time has any influence there. For example, the "Lord of the Rings" films were released annually, but in story time only a few days pass between installments (at most). If we go a little closer to the subject matter, the various Trek series made roughly the same equation - Picard had been captain of the Enterprise for seven years by the end of "The Next Generation" - but twenty-odd episodes are a much longer (and much more credible) span to depict a year's worth of stories than six, or even nine.

Of course, the bigger problem is that if you add a two-month gap after every single episode, it kills a lot of story momentum: McCabe's grief in "The Widening Gyre" doesn't make much sense if you're meant to think it's been over a year since "Vigil", Aster's one-two punch with Hanar and Zen in season 4 falters, and so on. It doesn't help that there was no explicit indication of time passing on that kind of scale until the fifth season - and even then, it was just Aster and Zen celebrating their one-year anniversary, and enough time had passed in-series since "Crossroads" to sort-of-justify the jump.

Winding down, let's talk about what "Hidden Frontier" did well: conceptually speaking, I loved (and still love) the idea of exploring a fixed location in space (the Briar Patch), with both a static setting (DS12) and several ships in rotation (Shelby's Excelsior, Cole's Independence, etc.) There's a clear and visible improvement from the fifth season onward in terms of story arc construction, acting and visual effects. I should also note that "Hidden Frontier" is exceptionally fair to its female characters, with women like Cole, Elbrey, Nechayev, Lefler and Shelby holding their own against (and in some cases, outshining) their male counterparts. And we can't ignore the fact that this series ran for seven years - warts and all, that's an impressive achievement that speaks to genuine dedication and consistent hard work.

What "Hidden Frontier" didn't do so well: characterization. Looking back, I can point to several characters and say they're my favorites - McCabe, Bobby Rice's Ro, Rebecca Wood's McFarland, etc. - but I can't say that any of them were explored in any depth. Some characters didn't seem to have a personal life (Shelby has an in-story excuse for that in the fifth season, but nothing happens after that), others were locked in a monotonous cycle (the Aster-Dao merry-go-round of "I love you/No you don't"). And Ian Knapp will forever baffle me.

As I said, the Grey just didn't work out in the long run - they go from being the primary innovation of the fan-series (at least at first) to sixth-stringers in just three seasons. Things get much better when Siroc is integrated into the story, but there would've been no way to plausibly retcon the Grey at that point so they just sort of hang around.

I gather the green-screen technique will have its detractors and defenders: personally, I didn't mind it, as that's precisely the sort of thing I'm inclined to overlook when dealing with fan-productions (again, it's all about standards and expectations being adjusted for the medium and the mode).

And finally, what I would've liked to see: according to John Whiting (who played Henglaar), the writers of "Hidden Frontier" deliberately avoided three concepts throughout their run: time travel, the Borg (with the exception of "In Memory Of", which really wasn't that bad) and the Mirror Universe. The reasoning behind that decision was that these concepts had already been done to death on the various Trek series. And I'll concede the first two - TNG gives us more than enough time travel stories, and nothing more needed to be said about the Borg after "First Contact" - but...

Obviously, as a fan of the Mirror Universe, I'm going to wish "Hidden Frontier" had gone there. But it's more than just an appreciation of the setting: the appeal of the Mirror Universe is that it lets actors put different spins on their characters. Someone like Rebecca Wood pulls this off easily enough - Betras, McFarland and Vindenpawl are very distinct and separate characters - but it might've been interesting to see Bobby Rice attempt a Mirror Ro in the mold of Intendant Kira, or see Risha Denney portray a broken and hopeless Shelby (alternatively, a gun-crazy sociopathic Shelby). Knapp would probably still be a douche, but some things never change. The point is, yes, the Mirror Universe degenerated into farce by the end of DS9, but it still offered a bit of leeway and range for the actors, allowing their characters to do things that wouldn't be possible in a standard episode.

Final thoughts: overall, I have to admit that "Hidden Frontier" ended up being more an academic project than genuine entertainment for me. I can say it was an interesting experience, but fun? Not so much. And that's not because I held it up to the standards of network television - on the contrary, I tried to avoid making any kind of unfair comparison, not only because different fan-production groups have different resources, but also because "Hidden Frontier" is much older than, say, "Phase II", and it's not impossible to see Cawley's efforts as being informed, at least to a degree, by the successes and failures of its thematic predecessor. All that said, I hesitate to recommend "Hidden Frontier" for anyone just looking for an enjoyable fan film, as I imagine the flaws will be difficult to overlook if you're not interested in doing a bit of digging.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6f

2009-03-07T22:05:00.000-08:00

At last we've come to the final season of "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier". It's been a long road, with plenty of ups and downs. Today we'll do an episode-by-episode review of Season 7, and next time I'll take a macro-level overview of the series in terms of what it has (and hasn't) accomplished.

* "Heavy Losses" picks up right where we left off, in the middle of the Battle of Tren'La. Knapp is, of course, behaving like a child, sulking at Elbrey because she had him removed from command. Meanwhile, it turns out those giant constructs in the middle of the Tholian fleet are orbital platforms, and all this time I'd thought they were Tetrahedrons. Hmm.

The villains have a chat about vague bargains they've made with Siroc, and I really wish this had been developed further: given what his ultimate goal turns out to be, and Betras' actions in the finale, I'd love to know why any of them were helping him in the first place. I'm also a bit disappointed that the Cardassians are shown to regress to Dominion-era behavior, as I'd thought "Grave Matters" had done a fine job of moving them beyond that.

Dao gets reassigned to Naros' ship, the Helena, effectively splitting him and Aster up. The next few episodes are pretty much a textbook deconstruction of a relationship, very predictable and thorough, but I still can't help feeling that it's incredibly forced and that the alternative we're heading towards hasn't been established.

"Heavy Losses" ends with a new status quo, effectively setting the stage for the last act of the story. It's worth noting that the closer we get to the end, the bolder the risks "Hidden Frontier" will take; while we've had a few character deaths and departures so far, it pales in comparison to the next eight episodes. And I'm quite pleased about this: in mainstream television, characters will be killed off because their actors want to leave, or want more money, or get arrested for drunk driving, but "Hidden Frontier" had been more resistant to this, with very few characters actually being killed off as opposed to recast. And that makes sense: if you don't have a network imposing its authority on you, and - barring real-life constraints - your actors want to be there, you could conceivably become protective of your characters to the point where they're beyond real harm. It's a very easy trap to fall into, but Caves and company dodge the bullet quite well, as we'll soon see.

* "Bound" has Knapp resigning and heading off in search of Traya. I hoped that meant he'd stay away for a while... no such luck. We also have an amusing subplot with Lefler not quite adapting to her new position, and I liked that twist simply because it's completely in character: she's not command material, she doesn't have Shelby's ambition, and she only accepted the job because Shelby couldn't find anyone else.

But the most interesting storyline here is Ro's, as Matt pushes him to hook up with Nej'ta (the Klingon captain from last season's finale). The results are... pretty hilarious. I mean, it's a milestone for Ro because he's finally with a guy (even if it's not the guy he wants), but the whole Klingon-mating-through-S&M is so overwrought it skirts dangerously near parody (ie: turns out Klingons have ridges in other places too).

Here's the thing, though. Nej'ta? Is Karen Filipelli from "The Office". Perfectly likeable, but nothing more than a placeholder, a delaying tactic to make sure the real love story (Jim and Pam, or - in the case of "Hidden Frontier" - Ro and Aster) goes as far as it possibly can. And a Ro/Aster pairing has been so heavily telegraphed that you can't see Nej'ta as anything other than an obstacle.

* "Past Sins" sees the surprising return of Jenna McFarland, last seen in the third season. She's now played by Rebecca Wood, her third role on the series (she also plays Betras and Vindenpawl), and I thought she did a great job of separating the three, putting much more of a Starbuck-esque "crazy pilot" spin on Jenna.

The Doomsday Clock is still ticking for Aster and Dao, as Jorian reunites with Cassius Dao's former lover. Unfortunately, this leads into an uninspired Trill storyline that's basically a retread of "Security Counsel", yet another corrupt and hypocritical politician abusing his power, etc. That said, it leads to a great reveal where Siroc turns out to be much more flexible than most serial archvillains.

Elbrey and Henglaar have a subplot with Henglaar's niece Silan, and right about here is where Elbrey's sarcastic streak really takes off. It's pretty refreshing to have such a bitchy counselor, especially after Deanna Troi, but I do wonder about her success rate with patients - if Silan is any indication, probably not great.

* "Hearts and Minds" is another milestone, telling the last story of the USS Independence. I've always enjoyed the momentary asides to Jennifer Cole and her crew, and this final tale is appropriately tragic given that it's the last episode before the series finale gets underway. I loved the unnerving sequence with the collapsing bulkheads, and the glimpse of civilian resentment towards Starfleet raised some interesting questions about the supposed unity of mankind in the 24th century.

I'm less enthusiastic about Lorenzo Leonard replacing Brandon Stacy as Surgant - Leonard gives it a good try, but can't come close to Stacy's previous performance. It's a bit odd: "Hidden Frontier" tends to do very well when it replaces protagonist characters (ie: Ro, Lefler, Traya), but falters when it comes to recasting antagonists (I still think Suzy Kaplan's touch of flamboyance added a lot of color to the character of Vorina, and it didn't survive the switch in actresses).

The Aster/Dao storyline is just becoming repetitive at this point, and neither party is shown in a positive light: Corey's grasping at straws (seriously, what does he want already?), Jorian's being an asshole for no reason and is probably lying about wanting to play Hide The Symbiont with Mor. I see this sort of thing in romance storylines, where the writer wants a certain couple to reach a specific emotional state, but can't quite seem to get them there without someone overreacting in less-than-credible ways.

* As the name implies, "The Widening Gyre" is basically the beginning of the end, as "Hidden Frontier" wraps up with a four-part finale. Naros and the Helena go after Dr. Mor, Silan joins Traya in captivity, and Shelby's starting to crack under the strain of maintaining the Alpha Quadrant alliance.

Character-wise, McCabe has a new look - not so much the fresh-faced newbie anymore - and I love that he's still dealing with the fallout from "Vigil". Ro's looking a bit worse for the wear, which still amuses me (you have to wonder what constitutes Klingon spouse abuse). Anyway, this is the first episode with a significant Ro/Aster scene since... well, since Tara Abis was around. It's a scene that almost works thanks to Ro's newly-acquired self-awareness: it's a great reversal of "Ashes", where Corey was the one who knew exactly what was going on. But it doesn't work here because Ro basically talks himself out of his own offer - this could have been the starting point of an actual relationship, but good guys don't cheat, so nothing happens.

"Things Fall Apart" keeps the momentum going, finally taking us back to the Grey Research Facility and what they've been up to all this time. There's an odd comedy sequence where Ro, Aster, McCabe and Lefler run interference for a recuperating Shelby; this doesn't strike me as the most ideal time to try and get a laugh out of the viewers, but better late than never, I suppose. This episode also pulls off what may be the best cliffhanger in the series' entire run: there's an abduction, a bombing, a death, and a comeback for a presumed-dead character (although any real surprise is negated by the fact that S'Tal has basically been telegraphing the twist since last season).

"The Center Cannot Hold" starts by driving the final nail into the Aster/Dao coffin, so to speak. And I know I've stressed the point ad nauseum by now, but this latest development feels so transparent and manipulative, especially in light of Aster's decision in "The Widening Gyre" (in retrospect, he probably should've gone for broke). But Corey does manage to sum up the entire problem towards the end of the episode with a single line: "You are not the man I fell in love with."

Elsewhere, Princess Iliana fulfills her plot function as the Grey finally stage their comeback. In the long run, the Grey haven't quite worked as ongoing nemeses for our heroes, both because they're totally inconsistent in their motives and actions and because we never get to see any individual characters within that faction.

I should note that the pacing seems a bit off here, as characters find time for extended heart-to-heart chats while an apocalyptic battle rages around DS12. But that's a symptom of a larger issue we'll talk about next time.

And so we come to "Its Hour Come Round At Last", the series finale. For better or worse, seven years and fifty episodes come to an end here.

Sadly, we're still dealing with pacing problems, as Shelby and Nechayev have to deal with a new threat that quite literally comes out of nowhere, shifting our attention away from the Dyson Sphere showdown (which had been building up for a few seasons now). The villain alliance falls apart much too quickly, and when Siroc's motivation is finally revealed, it turns out to be pretty compelling - which would've been great, if it wasn't part of a last-minute reveal so condensed that I still don't understand what happens in the end.

On the up-side, there's a lot of closure here: for Jorian and Corey, for Myra, for Aris, for Ro and Nej'ta (that silent scream during the montage was actually rather moving). Of course, we're left with a few loose threads: was the Cardassians' treachery discovered? Why were the Tholians and Breen still involved after Siroc discarded them? Why wasn't Ba'ku destroyed by the giant wave of fire that spread throughout the Patch? Did Nechayev survive the final battle? (She's noticably absent at the end.)

The penultimate scene of the series is a Six Months Later epilogue with Ro and Aster getting married. And... look, I'm not necessarily saying Dao and Aster should've stayed together, because if the point of the Trill storyline was that you can't maintain a relationship with someone after his whole personality changes, that's perfectly valid. But Ro and Aster never had a relationship. Never even started one. The scene is played as a culmination of an ongoing storyline (Shelby's speech practically spells it out), but that's exactly the problem: we haven't seen any of this. Hell, even the wedding scene is laden with religious mumbo-jumbo as opposed to wedding vows (because at least then the characters could verbalize some kind of sentiment). As with Siroc, it just seems like a massive missed opportunity, telling rather than showing, summarizing events and emotions that should've played out on screen.

And then we get a coda with Shelby, Lefler and the Excelsior - there's a sense of palpable relief now that the war's over, and Starfleet can return to its roots (exploration, diplomatic relations, etc.) It's good that Caves and his team remembered that, because it's what separates "Star Trek" from its contemporaries: war was never the norm for Roddenberry's universe, and even if you needed the occasional Borg or Dominion or Grey threat to rear its head, that idea of exploration, of discovering cosmic anomalies and new species and whatnot, never completely faded away.

So that's how the story ends.

Sort of.

Turns out "Hidden Frontier" has produced no less than three spin-offs, and we'll be looking at those as well: what does it mean to extent a fan-fictional universe beyond its core narrative? What kinds of stories emerge from that? Do the series define themselves via the parent series, or is the "canon" Trekverse still the standard? Which characters make the transition to which spin-off, and why? All things I'm interested in examining.

How does the seventh season rate, then? On a purely technical level, there's no question that we've come a long, long way: actors are much more comfortable in their roles, the CGI's been refined, and if the storylines don't totally satisfy, they're at least exhibiting basic structure and coherence (which is more than we got with earlier efforts). I'll go into greater detail next time, but for now, suffice to say that "Hidden Frontier" goes out with a bang (more than one, in fact).

First Impressions: Dollhouse

2009-03-07T01:51:00.000-08:00

I've been holding off on reviewing this show, because frankly, I still don't know where I stand with Joss Whedon's latest project.

It's no secret that I've found his recent output disappointing, whether it's the horribly unfocused eighth season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or the sloppy last quarter of his "Astonishing X-Men" run. And news of pre-air tinkering hardly bolstered my confidence in "Dollhouse".

But I could never have predicted that the strongest feeling I'd get from this show is how strangely anti-female it seems to be: setting aside the rather gross implications of what these Dolls are actually used for, all the women we've seen so far are uniformly pathetic, whether it's last week's Beyonce stand-in or Ballard's simpering neighbor or Saunders. Echo's had her moments, but they don't really count, do they?

Because that's the biggest problem "Dollhouse" faces: the premise doesn't allow for character development. At least not in the short term. It's certainly a great platform to display acting skills, and both Eliza Dushku and Dichen Lachman do a great job of playing multiple distinct characters, but they're constantly being reset at the end of each episode - regardless of what may or may not be bleeding through. And even non-Doll characters aren't moving: Ballard's still playing his one note (even as Tahmoh Penikett demonstrates more range over on "Battlestar Galactica" this week), Topher's kind of a skeeze, and Lawrence... why is this guy around? Besides not liking Echo just because?

So yes, there are quite a few problems with this show. I appreciate Whedon trying to be experimental with the whole Doll concept, but there are some fundamental questions left unanswered, such as why you'd bother with a Doll since you can get the real thing for a lot cheaper - it's implied that Dolls are basically gestalt entities combining the best traits of a bunch of people, which theoretically makes them better at any task than a normal person... but that certainly hasn't borne itself out with Echo so far.

I'll be giving this show another two or three episodes, but to be honest, I kind of doubt a premise with as many holes as this one can turn things around in short order. We'll see...

Season in Review: Being Human

2009-03-07T01:46:00.001-08:00

Now that the chaos of the First Week of my Last Semester is over, it's back to business!

And wow, this one turned out to be a disappointment.

I'd noted before that the pilot episode of "Being Human" made a great first impression with me; I also pointed out that most of its strengths didn't actually survive the transition to the series premiere (namely, Mitchell was recast and there was a very tangible swerve away from the more light-hearted and comedic aspects of the series towards a more standardized "drama/horror" format).

Which pretty much sums the whole thing up, because by season's end, this show was about as funny as an episode of "Damages" or "In Treatment". That's not to say it couldn't have done well in that particular genre... it's just that what we ended up with was a fairly uninspired storyline with quasi-philosophical ditherings about what it means to be human, a dull "vampire wannabe-soulmates" plot that was about as exciting as the Angel/Darla Merry-Go-Round of Angsty Sex and Fake Repentance. Been there, seen that, and I wasn't all worked up about it the first time either.

Very much a missed opportunity, then. Too bad; it really did have potential.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6e

2009-02-26T08:01:00.001-08:00

(Minor administrative note: I've reconfigured the numbering for "Hidden Frontier" reviews. Seriously, it was getting out of hand, miles to go, yadda yadda...)

So we've finally reached the long-awaited sixth season of "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier". Does it redeem the mistakes of the past? Does it hit your brain like a particularly pleasant splash of acid, burning away the horror of "Santa Q"?

Yes. Yes, it does. To an extent. It would be more accurate to say that season 6 changes the type of criticism it invites, but before we get to that, let's take it episode by episode:

* "Countermeasures" is the Big Action Episode, as the Tholian/Breen alliance launches an all-out attack against the Federation. We've got ships exploding left and right, Commodore Cole delivering an Aragorn Speech that actually kind of works... and there's a last-minute surprise that really works.

Traya Knapp's been hit by the SORAS bug and is now Harvard-bound; I actually like her better at this age, as it lets her have her own storyline away from her father. In related cast news, Bobby Rice replaces Arthur Bosserman as Ro Nevin, and... let's just say it's a big step up and leave it at that.

One other noteworthy thing about this episode: the scene with Iliana suggests it's been three years since "Worst Fears", but that timeline just doesn't add up without mid-season time jumps every single season (because the finales and subsequent premieres are always two-parters). That's a lot of time to compress into half a dozen episodes, and we'll see the reprecussions of that towards the end of the season.

* "Dancing in the Dark": Oh, hey, Martinez! Long time no see. But the big revelation in this episode is Brandon Stacy as Betazoid interpreter Milo Surgant, who has this delightfully creepy way of alternating speech patterns between himself and his Horta partner. Brr. Meanwhile, we get a new tidbit of information regarding the Tetrahedrons: they're somehow connected to Omega, an ill-defined molecule that can somehow stop warp travel in the entire galaxy, forever. Not quite sure where the hell that came from, but... okay, I'll go with it for now.

* "Homeport" sets quite a few things in motion. First, the villains are starting to pull together, as Glinn Betras (from S4's "Grave Matters") joins Vorina (now played by Julie Anne Gardner, though I find she lacks the flourish Suzy Kaplan brought to the role) and Surgant (on a slightly shallow note, Brandon Stacy looks damn good in black; practically a dead ringer for the world's hottest serial killer).

I do have a slight problem here, though: it's never made clear why these individuals are working with Siroc. What exactly is Betras after? What's Surgant's motivation?(We can assume Vorina's getting paid.) The Tholians have no screen presence to speak of, so they're hardly important, but if we're getting to know Siroc's inner circle on a personal level, it would've been nice to understand their stake in this whole matter.

Meanwhile, there's a nice bit with S'Tal and Barrett exploring humor, though I still think S'Tal's depiction is a touch on the extreme side - she's basically being written as a flesh-and-blood Data, which makes her romantic subplot rather awkward.

We're also introduced to Tara Abis, a new love interest for Ro; this seems to put a quiet end to the Ro/Aster/Dao triangle (which never really seemed to go anywhere, as I can only recall a single episode where Jorian and Nevin were in the same room), but as we'll see later, the situation's not quite that simple.

Speaking of Dao, this is really the first time we see Jorian with his new gestalt personality, and I'm pleased to say that Adam Browne pulls it off, giving Jorian a quiet but solid well of confidence that most certainly wasn't there before. Nicely done!

* On to "Beachhead", and how's this for continuity: Aris and the trapped Ethereals, last seen in "Worst Fears", make a comeback. We also return to Vrijheid ("Security Counsel"), still under the control of the subtly menacing Vindenpawl. Knapp is promoted to Admiral (oy) and the Federation manages to sign up virtually every Alpha Quadrant power to take on Siroc, the Tholians and their Tetrahedron (no mention of the Breen anymore; are we to assume they backed out?).

There's also an odd twist with Aster and Dao, where Corey basically flies off the handle for reasons that don't make a lot of internal sense (though, from a plot-centric perspective, it's certainly obvious where they're going with that). More on that later.

* If "Beachhead" deals with internal continuity for the "Hidden Frontier" series, "Vigil takes intertextuality a step further: James Cawley (who plays Captain Kirk in "Phase II") guest-stars as Mackenzie Calhoun, Shelby's ex-boyfriend and the protagonist of Peter David's "New Frontier" novels. On top of that, this episode is a quasi-sequel to my second-favorite DS9 episode, "In The Pale Moonlight" ("Duet" being at the top of the list), as a Romulan commander exposes the Federation deception that led the Romulans to participate in the Dominion War. Unfortunately, that plotline gets aborted halfway through to deal with a more generic scenario (tension between former enemies dissolving in the face of teamwork).

Tension's also starting to mount between Ro, Tara and Aster. Let's start with the good: I loved how Tara's insight is so subtle, in that she thinks Ro doesn't like to talk and it turns out he just hasn't been talking to her.

Of course, the most noteworthy scene is the Big Reveal where Ro finally admits everything: that he lied about remembering Corey from the Academy (a nice callback to "Encke"), that he's been in denial all this time, and, of course, that he's in love with Corey. Now, granted that there's a bit of a fake-out here (which I loved), but... okay, it's pretty clear by now that the writers have done an about-face and they're set on Ro and Aster getting together. And I could see that working, except for two things: first, it's way too soon, Tara had only just started out and there hasn't been enough... hell, there hasn't been any groundwork laid to really sell this development.

The second issue is simply that the writers sold me on Aster and Zen back in the fourth season: they were cute together, the actors have chemistry, and there haven't been any significant Ro/Aster scenes in the interrim. To get Ro and Aster together, Dao's got to go, which explains the sudden and exaggerated bickering. It's all more than a little forced.

Oddly enough, there's no follow-through on last episode's cliffhanger. Hmm.

* And finally, we have "Her Battle Lanterns Lit" in which the Klingons make their long-overdue debut (excluding Qu'Qul from "Entanglement"), McCabe deals with his grief by visiting Sensei Kickass again (always a pleasure!), and the Alpha Quadrant powers move against Siroc.

Lest you think that Knapp's ascension to the top of Starfleet's food chain has in any way changed him for the better... no, he's still a douche. Uprooting Shelby just because he's comfortable on the Excelsior? Check. Folding in the middle of combat because of a personal threat? Check. I'd love to know whether he's supposed to come off as a complete idiot, or... no, I can't think of an alternative to that. It must be intentional.

The season ends on the best cliffhanger so far, which says a lot about how far the series has come over the years. Now, remember when I said the sixth season changes the type of criticism it invites? Here's the thing: in earlier seasons, the sentiment I found myself repeating over and over was that I could just about see what Caves and his team were aiming for on the conceptual level, and in those terms their ideas were sound and interesting. But the execution of those ideas was awkward at best, downright awful at worst, resulting in a consistent sense of missed opportunities.

That's not the case here. Or rather, I do feel opportunities were missed, but in a more general "spilled milk" sort of way. For example, Surgant's betrayal would've had a lot more bite to it if he'd been around in the fifth season; the problems between Aster and Dao should have started much earlier so that Ro's sudden change of heart wouldn't seem so convenient, etc. It's not the execution that's flawed here, it's the timing. And that's a different matter, because if you took the events of this season, intact, and simply rearranged the sequence of events so there'd be enough build-up over an extended period of time, those same events would've been much more dramatically satisfying.

So there's definite, tangible improvement here, all across the board. It's not an ideal jumping-on point by any means, and I don't rightly know if it's enough to keep less-patient viewers going through the earlier seasons... but for me, personally, this series just got a lot more interesting.

Game Review: Overlord

2009-02-24T07:31:00.000-08:00

Now this one's just plain cute.

Seven heroes (a Halfling, an Elf, a Paladin, a Dwarf, a Wizard, a Thief and a Warrior) defeated the Evil Overlord, ransacked his Tower and scattered his minions throughout the land. Years later, you awaken as the new incarnation of the Overlord, and set out to rebuild your empire.

There's just one problem: those heroes who vanquished your predecessor? They've each succumbed to one of the Seven Deadly Sins, so the Halfling steals food from other villages and has ballooned up to the size of a small house, the Paladin's lecherous liaisons with succubi has brought a plague of undeath down on his city, the sloth-induced slumber of the Elf King left his people vulnerable to an invasion of greedy Dwarves seeking gold, etc.

It's a subversion of typical fantasy fare, because while the game casts you as the traditional villain of the piece, you're fighting fallen heroes who are arguably worse than you. But the real appeal of "Overlord" is its darkly humorous approach and the many in-jokes: for example, as you stand at the mouth of a labyrinth, your chief advisor (and the game's narrator in lieu of the silent Overlord) tells you to kill any dancing goblins or singing princesses you may encounter. It'll probably come as no surprise that the game was written by Rhianna Pratchett (daughter of Terry), as its semi-irreverent parody of the fantasy genre and its conventions is very much in line with something like "Good Omens".

"Overlord" belongs to a particular sub-genre I've only just started exploring, where the environment and storyline react to the choices you make. At various points throughout the game, you're offered certain choices: do you save the last surviving Elven women or abandon them for a cartload of gold? Do you forgive the treacherous peasants who conspired against you or slaughter them to the last man? Do you stay loyal to your strategically-minded, prim and proper mistress or throw her over for her sluttier sister? You can choose to be noble or truly evil, and your appearance and powers will change depending on what you do; likewise, your Dark Tower (seen from the outside only at the main menu) will reflect your level of Corruption, as will the game's multiple endings. For the most part, the game seems to reward the most vile and wicked courses of action, as they result in more powerful minions and far more damaging spells. But to get full 100% corruption, you have to do things like kill 500 peasants, burn down the Elves' Sacred Grove, and steal a sacred idol just because it looks nice in your mistress' quarters. Too evil? That's up to you!

This compensates for a rather linear plot. While quests in any given land can generally be completed in any order, you can't choose which of the seven heroes to target, and you can't leave your current "zone" until the major quests have been resolved (probably a good thing, given that the levels get progressively harder). On the other hand, the game's script is so enjoyable that I don't much mind its restrictions.

Gameplay is interesting: you directly control the Overlord, but most of the action is achieved via your loyal minions - using the mouse, you order them to attack enemies, pull switches, pick up items and so on. Initially you start with five Browns (simple warriors), but you'll eventually recover the lost tribes and gather a horde thirty or forty strong. Summoning minions requires life-force, which you harvest by killing anything that moves: from sheep to townsfolk to trolls to rock giants. Controlling the minions can be a bit tricky, as you have to specify targets via a mouse-keyboard combination and you will encounter scenarios requiring you to multitask and split your followers accordingly, but once you get the hang of it, you'll enjoy setting traps and launching two-pronged attacks on unwitting enemies.

The expansion pack, "Raising Hell", takes the story a step further: you learn that villagers attempting to escape your tyranny have fled into mysterious portals that have opened up throughout your kingdom. Of course, as befits a Pratchett story, it's not quite that simple: the heavenly backdrop falls away to reveal a dimension of fire, torment and pain called the Abyss. And the souls of the fallen heroes have ended up here as well, suffering eternal torture of the ironic kind (ie: the Halfling's gluttony is stymied when the food comes to life and fights back). Since "Raising Hell" is integrated into the main game, you can actually access the Abyss levels before completing the core game - the death of a hero unlocks the Abyss zone correlating to his land. But the difficulty level is significantly higher, so you're better off postponing your trip to Hell until you're properly equipped.

I had a really great time with this game: it's charming, it's relatively fast-paced (except for the long walks between checkpoints...), it takes a hilariously sardonic swing at some of the biggest cliches in literature, and you'll probably get a little attached to your imp-like minions after a few hours. Very much worth a play-through.

Movie Review: Otto

2009-02-22T11:00:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've reviewed works in other media... as usual, HERE BE SPOILERS.

"Otto" (or "Up With Dead People") is a trippy, surreal, metafictional German movie about zombies. Sort of. Otto is an undead teenager in a world where fringe society has embraced the image and concept of the zombie as the ultimate outsider, representing the corruption and rot of the mainstream. The opening narration also informs us that zombies have evolved and now exhibit a semblance of intelligence, though their hunger for living flesh is still their most prominent feature.

Enter Medea Yarn, the bastard offspring of Wednesday Addams and Karl Marx. She's working on a movie called "Up With Dead People", a semi-pornographic tale of gay zombies revolting against the capitalist upper classes. (Just to point out how weird this movie is: Medea's girlfriend, Hella Bent, literally lives in a bubble of silent film - whenever she's around, her section of the screen goes black-and-white, piano music starts playing, and her dialogue appears on plaques after she speaks. It's whimsical, but amusing.)

Medea sees herself as a champion of the downtrodden, so when she meets Otto - a filthy, shambling, bloodied mess who can't remember his previous life - she takes him under her wing and casts him in "Up With Dead People". But the joke's on her, because Medea thinks Otto is just a method actor wholly dedicated to his role.

That's what makes this movie so interesting: at some point, we're led to question whether zombies even exist in this world, because aside from Otto, every walking corpse we see turns out to be an actor in Medea's film. In fact, it eventually becomes clear that we've been alternating between "reality" and "Up With Dead People" all along, and maybe there were never any real zombies at all.

But if that's true, what about Otto? There's a twist here that's basically an inversion of Ryan Reynolds' "The Nines", because we expect a bizarre and unnatural resolution to that question - maybe, by some freakish coincidence, Otto is the only real zombie in a world that has appropriated his condition and made it completely symbolic - but we eventually get a perfectly rational explanation for what's going on. It may not be true, because Otto's damaged memories can support either scenario, but I always prefer narratives that leave the choice to the audience rather than raise an ambiguity and then force the audience down one path of interpretation; it didn't work for "The Nines" and it hasn't worked for "Battlestar Galactica" (as evidenced by the fact that the mumbo-jumbo has been mostly absent since Earth).

Most movies like "Otto" tend to straddle a very thin line when it comes to suspension of disbelief, and it's very easy to cross that line: in fact, I'd say the overwhelmingly dominant trend is to strain that suspension until it snaps and can't be restored. This is exactly where "The Nines" or "Jacob's Ladder" would go wrong, by creating an unstable and ambiguous world and then going just a touch too far for us to follow. It's relatively rare to find a narrative that toes the line without crossing it... but "Otto" does so very nicely.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6d

2009-02-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

To use the Savage Critics' scale, if the first four seasons of "Hidden Frontier" represent a slow rise from AWFUL to OKAY, the second half of this season finally edges into genuinely GOOD territory. For the first time, the series makes proper use of its core concepts and character arcs; it's still far from ideal, because there's more mileage that could've been wrung out of every storyline, but at least the basic execution holds together. Carlos Pedraza, one of the series' staff writers during the fifth season, pointed out to me that this was the point in which the HF story arcs stopped being ad hoc, replaced with a long(er)-term plan, and I think that much is readily apparent.

* The season starts with "Entanglement Part II", and it actually feels more like part of the fourth season because the improvements haven't quite kicked in yet: it turns out the Grey are using mind-control parasites on their subjugated population (aren't they supposed to be telepathic?), Iliana pops up to remind everyone that the Tren'La storyline from the second season was never resolved, and everyone's still worked up about Tetrahedrons. But the episode does have some high points, mostly to do with Qu'Qul and Henglaar squabbling over Sou.

* "Imminent Danger" reintroduces S'Tal, last seen in S4 episode "Addictions" (though, wow, she looks a lot better without the Eyebrows of Doom). It's basically a character piece for Andrew Barrett, who undergoes the traditional Heroic Blue Screen of Death after killing a Tholian during an ambush. It's done competently enough, though I thought depicting S'Tal as being unable to understand basic concepts like friendship and psychological trauma was a bit much. Meanwhile, the Tholians have appointed Siroc as their ambassador to the Federation, and I'm definitely starting to warm up to him as the primary villain, despite the obscurity of his plans and agendas.

* "Darkest Night" is... well, it's a bit odd given that it follows "Imminent Danger", because there's another planet-side ambush, another Tetrahedron-related mystery, and Barrett once again gets slapped upside the head by the Bad Luck Fairy. The episode holds itself together in a very basic and adequate fashion, but it had so much more to offer on the level of character dynamics: there's a build-up to a Ro vs. Zen showdown that never actually happens, and Barrett... I would've loved to see him interpret his misfortune here as karmic payback for killing that Tholian last episode, but that doesn't happen either. All things considered, it feels like a missed opportunity.

* "Security Counsel" is an interesting post-9/11 allegory, where a corrupt president of a Federation world is using anti-terrorist measures to assume more and more control over the planet and its people; McCabe serves as the voice of reason, teaming up with a sympathetic civilian investigator to uncover the truth. This episode does for McCabe what "Grave Matters" could have done for Ro, fleshing out his character just enough to make him an effective focalizer for the audience. The metaphors for the Patriot Act and its ilk are a bit heavy-handed, but then, I assume that's the whole point - to take that whole discourse to its most extreme conclusion. And it works well, despite being a bit dated in the post-Bush discourse (which I imagine is the same problem all Bush-era fiction will face in the coming years).

* Continuing the theme of long-overdue characterization, "Epitaph" finally gives us a closer look at Elizabeth Shelby. For all that she's been the center of the post-Knapp series, this is the first time we've seen her outside her capacity as captain of the Excelsior. Now, ordinarily we'd assign the fault for that to the writers, but this episode puts a rather clever twist on things: Shelby, as it turns out, has been so focused on her career that she literally has no personal life, and that's become a point of regret for her. Coming so close to the end of the season, there isn't much room for this plotline to continue, but I hope it shows up again.

Back at DS12, Iliana's still moping about, but we finally get some answers about the Grey, the Tetrahedrons, the Patch and the Tholians. There's a bit of rewriting going on, if Naros is to be believed: apparently the Tren'La provoked the Grey in the first place. And yes, that changes the dynamics, but I'm not comfortable with the implication that the extermination of the Tren'La is karmic payback - it seems disproportionate, especially in the Trekverse where wholesale obliteration isn't exactly common.

* I've neglected to mention this before, but seasons four through seven of "Hidden Frontier" bring the episode count down to six (as opposed to nine). The pros: less filler, a greater sense of urgency, and momentum. The cons: well, season five finale "The Battle Is Joined" starts with Aster and Zen celebrating their one-year anniversary. Three episodes ago, Zen was still insecure and jealous of Ro, and that whole situation was very much unclear. It feels a bit like a cheat, fast-forwarding through all the actual relationship bits to get to the Drama... but that's the price we pay for having so many storylines and so many characters in the rotation.

Anyway, this finale makes some dramatic changes on both the personal and the galactic level: Zen's worst fear comes to pass, as he's asked to join with a Trill symbiont at the risk of destroying his relationship with Aster. That's a storyline I've been looking forward to ever since the possibility was raised back when Zen and Aster first got together; I'm quite curious to see how it turns out. Meanwhile, the Federation finds itself in the middle of a free-for-all, as the Tholians turn out to be at war with the Grey as well. I like this development despite still not seeing enough of either faction to care, one way or another, as to what they're up to.

Apparently there's a minor crossover here with fan series "Star Trek: Intrepid", as Naros chats with another El-Aurian from that production. It's a rather superfluous scene, though guest character Keran makes an interesting point: the El-Aurians (and Siroc) are, by virtue of their long life, "playing a longer game" - each one of them could potentially be setting up schemes that span decades, even centuries. It's not an easy thing to pull off in fiction, at least not convincingly, so I doubt this scene foreshadows some Grand Master Plan in the wings so much as a generic Ominously Vague Chat Between Two Folks In The Know.

And with that, we've caught up with the ideal entry point pegged by the series' creators: next time we'll look at Season 6 and see whether enough progress has been made to really make a difference.

High Eight Us

2009-02-16T11:53:00.001-08:00

Vacation time at last! See you guys on Sunday!

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6c

2009-02-15T12:14:00.000-08:00

The fourth season of "Hidden Frontier" represents a step sideways rather than forward: we get some changes to the status quo, a few set pieces moving around, but in general the quality is equal to last season. Which means it's neither excruciatingly bad nor genuinely entertaining; an acceptable limbo in the short term, not so much for a span of thirty episodes.

Because of this, I don't have much to say about the fourth season, but some things merit attention:

* Last season's finale and this season's premiere constitute the "Hell's Gate" two-parter, in which we lose an old villain and gain a new one in Siroc, a man from Naros' past who's working with the Tholians against the Federation. Luko is sent off to command his own ship, replaced by Matt McCabe (formerly of Cole's crew). McFarland also seems to have disappeared, though she's still mentioned often.

Luko was a borderline character: far from fleshed out, but more sympathetic than earlier attempts in this series. We get a last-minute reminder that there was something going on between him and Lefler, but as has become par for the course, it doesn't go anywhere.

What this season does demonstrate successfully is a quality that sets "Hidden Frontier" apart from the canonical "Star Trek" on a thematic level: change occurs much more often in the former than the latter, and I'm referring to change both on the level of character and on the level of galactic events. In seven years of the Picard era, the core bridge crew changed exactly twice: Tasha Yar died in the first season, and Dr. Crusher was replaced for a while before coming back. The first Borg attack on Earth had no visible reprecussions (those turned up in the "First Contact" movie). The Klingon civil war that erupted in the fourth or fifth season (I forget) was about Worf, and ultimately led him right back to where he'd already been. Stability was very much part of the show's foundations at that time. "Deep Space 9" tried to change this with the Dominion War, and it worked (for a while), but on the other hand, the only main character to die throughout that series' run had a resurrection angle built into her backstory.

"Hidden Frontier" seems to openly oppose that notion of stasis and stability: people are always moving about, arriving and departing and dying, and the Federation can find itself fighting the Grey one moment and the Tholians the next (although this can be as much a weakness as a strength, as it leaves no room to develop the villains). Incidentally, this is one reason why I'm so fond of the established Mirror Universe, because it's also very dynamic and active, things can change and characters can die, and there's no obligation to stick to any particular status quo (one of the great tragedies of the Berman/Braga era was the eventual decay of the Mirror Universe into a repetitive farce; as a plot device, it worked wonders for characters like Kira, Quark and Sisko).

* We also have "Grave Matters" and "Crossroads", a pair of back-to-back episodes that complicate the Ro/Aster storyline, which I'm continuing to follow with some degree of interest.

We'd seen Starfleet dealing with post-Dominion Cardassia prior to "Grave Matters", but this is the first time we've had Cardassian characters interacting with our cast. When a science vessel uncovers a mass grave for Bajoran refugees, Starfleet and Cardassia launch a joint investigation, and Corey finds himself attracted to one of their junior officers (much to Ro's consternation).

Now, I know I'd decided not to criticize acting in these reviews, but... well, "Grave Matters" is the episode that should have made Ro Nevin. He's at the center of this story: still carrying the scars of the Occupation, still ashamed of his feelings for Aster, and quite possibly disgusted - racially - at the thought of Aster having sex with a Cardassian, which is the sort of thing "Star Trek" never did before with regards to race relations; what do you do if you're a Klingon and your quasi-love interest sleeps with a Romulan? What if you're a Bajoran and a person you're interested in falls for a Cardassian? After all, the aliens of "Star Trek" tend to carry personal baggage on species-wide levels (ie: all Klingons hate all Romulans, all Romulans hate all Vulcans, etc., though you always have a minority that opposes this).

But Arthur Bosserman, the actor who plays Ro, can't get any of this across. This was perhaps the pivotal Ro episode and it's botched because Bosserman doesn't emote, doesn't put out any kind of feeling beyond detached apathy and juvenile anger that doesn't even scratch the surface of what should be going on.

"Crossroads" complicates the romantic subplot by throwing Ensign Zen into the mix, an unjoined Trill who's fallen for Corey but doesn't want to get involved; if he's chosen to bond with a symbiont, he might not be the same person afterwards. As with "Grave Matters", "Crossroads" takes general facts already established in the Trekverse and asks very practical questions about them: we don't know what Jadzia or Ezri were like before Dax, so maybe Zen's concern is legitimate - could you have a relationship in which one person undergoes a transformation so profound and so permanent that they essentially become someone else? It's a metaphor for the way people change over time, except that for Trills the change is instant and the ramifications are immediate. At any rate, Corey's decision isn't a surprise, though I do think it's the more interesting of the two possibilities.

Meanwhile, the Federation has another encounter with the Tholians, and Starfleet is defeated. Again. For all that it's a welcome change to the perceived invincibility of the Federation in earlier series, I have to admit the losing streak in "Hidden Frontier" is starting to get a bit out of hand. By constantly being in the dark and on the defensive, they - and by extension, the viewer - still have no idea what Siroc wants with the Tetrahedrons (which were introduced two seasons ago and yet remain completely obscure).

* The season finale, part 1 of "Entanglement", follows the same broad lines as "Hell's Gate": Vorina and the rest of the Orion pirates return, now working for Siroc; it's still All About The Tetrahedrons, for reasons that are still unclear. There's also a subplot in which Henglaar's ex-wife visits with her new Klingon beau, and it's almost - almost - fun. Points for avoiding the stereotype of the shrewish ex: Sou (bad name for a pig-based humanoid) is likeable enough, and all she really wants is for the two men in her life to get along.

That's about all I have to say at this point; the fourth season doesn't really distinguish itself beyond the Ro/Aster/Zen storyline, which is still being handled a touch too clumsily for my tastes.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6b

2009-02-11T12:27:00.000-08:00

Onto season three of "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier", and I'm glad to say the upward mobility continues - at a snail's pace, but it's something.

* We start with the two concluding chapters of "Worst Fears", in which the Grey finally attack DS12 using the old bait-and-switch tactic. I didn't mention the cliffhanger ending to the previous season because all three parts of "Worst Fears" are oddly abbreviated, only about 10-15 minutes per episode. This likely contributed to how abruptly the whole situation is resolved; it also kills any drama that could have emerged from the body count, as a first-season character dies off-screen while another introduced last season is written off in a manner that seems permanent. Unfortunately, we're not only lacking any reason to care about these characters in the first place, but there's no time to see anyone else react except for a rather awkward one-line eulogy in the next episode: "That boy never knew when to quit." Ouch.

* "Heroes" marks the first time I was drawn into a character's subplot, as Sha'Kev returns to torment Robin after their last encounter in "The Great Starship Robbery". Now, this doesn't actually go anywhere until the season finale, but the episode still manages to create a sense of empathy for a character who, until now, had been a sometimes-irritating cipher.

It's also worth noting that "Heroes" is the first episode to really take advantage of the multiple settings available in this series, as the A-plot features Commodore Cole and the USS Independence taking on Tzenkethi pirates. It's a nice change, but Caves and company haven't quite mastered the art of character introduction - we get new faces like Commander Johns and Lieutenant McCabe, but they're as much ciphers as anyone else in this series and we're given no reason to like them any more than we do the crew of the Excelsior. The one person who does stand out is Jennifer Cole, if only because her composed and unshakeable command style is a marked contrast to Knapp's hysterics.

Speaking of the Galactic Prat, we also have a (mercifully) short C-plot with Knapp and Traya stuck on a shuttlecraft and and finally communicating properly; I understand that they're trying to soften him up through his daughter, but after over a dozen episodes with Knapp in the spotlight, the damages has been done. The good news is that this is the last episode with Knapp in the foreground, but we'll get to that later.

* "In Memory Of" brings Corey Aster back for a flashback episode in which he, Jason Munoz and Jenna McFarland went up against the Borg and the Q. It's actually a decent enough story, marred only by Munoz figuring everything out moments after getting involved - though, if we're inclined to be lenient, we can handwave this as the result of pacing versus "air" time; most "Hidden Frontier" episodes run for 25-30 minutes, whereas the average "Next Generation" episode would go for at least 40, and could therefore afford to spend five or ten minutes investigating the Mystery of the Week before providing a solution.

It's interesting that this episode tries to restore the Borg's credibility as a viable threat - they really were terrifying during the Picard era, especially in "First Contact", but it's my understanding that "Voyager" pretty much castrated them by the end of its run. "In Memory Of" begins with present-day Aster dreaming of Farpoint Station being destroyed by the Borg; moments later that event is reported on the Federation news network. Being a Wolf 359 survivor, Corey is bitter that Starfleet had become complacent about the Borg, especially since the Borg have now adapted to whatever technological advantage the Federation had previously held. It's a valid point and a great way to reestablish the Borg as a major threat... except that "Hidden Frontier" already has a technologically-superior antagonist in the Grey. I can't see the Borg serving any long-term story-related purpose, which begs the question: what are they doing here, then?

* "Modus Operandi" introduces some interesting character dynamics. First we have Commander Tolian Naros, a mysterious El-Aurian who seems to have his own agenda; Shelby, of course, starts digging. Naros may or may not be the character who crossed over to Sulu's timeline in "Yesterday's Excelsior" last season: it was the same actor, but there's no evidence to suggest a connection so far. We also get to see a more sympathetic side to Nechayev, and Lefler's friendship with Shelby (apparently established in Peter David's "New Frontier" novels) gets some screen time as well.

Rawlins is the latest off-screen departure, sent off with his half-Son'a girlfriend to start a family. Again, I appreciate what Caves is doing here in terms of keeping things fluid (though I do wonder how many of these changes were intentional rather than imposed due to real-life considerations), but Rawlins was an incredibly minor character - the only real contribution he made in two seasons was his indifferent reaction to the Ro/Aster thing.

We're also starting to see the beginning of a bigger picture, so to speak: Matt McCabe is still investigating the artifacts retrieved from the Orion Syndicate in "Heroes", and he believes they're connected to the hyperdimensional Tetrahedrons from "Encke". The episodes are too far apart to be considered a running subplot, but it's better than nothing.

* But "nothing" would have been far better than "Santa Q". Oh God, it's bad. It's so, so bad. Knapp and Elbrey explain the Meaning of Christmas to Traya while admitting that, being the 24th century and all, nobody actually celebrates religious holidays anymore (we are, after all, dealing with Roddenberry's Homogenous Humanity). And then Q turns up to talk theology for a bit. NEXT!

* "Ashes takes the Ro/Aster storyline a step forward: seems Ro is attracted to Corey, he's just too uncomfortable with that idea to admit it to anyone. Corey, of course, sees right through him and pushes forward anyway. Being the First Gay Storyline in "Star Trek" (regardless of its non-canonical status), these developments are certainly noteworthy, though I still find I much prefer the "Phase II" approach of treating the Issue as a Non-Issue; it certainly smoothes out awkward moments like the cliche-tastic speech Corey delivers on how he and Ro should understand themselves rather than listen to other people. That said, I liked the reversal at the end, and matters between them are left very much unresolved, so we'll see where that goes.

But by putting Ro in the spotlight, "Ashes" inadvertently calls attention to the fact that, in terms of his backstory, he's the most problematic character in the entire series. Generally speaking, the cast of "Hidden Frontier" divides into two categories: imports drawn from pre-established series (ie: Shelby, Ibanya, Nechayev) and original characters (ie: Knapp, Elbrey, McFarland). We do have some minor continuity implants, such as Luko being a former member of the Voyager crew (though nothing is done with that potentially interesting set-up), but Ro Nevin is a problem: he's Ro Laren's little brother, except that Laren's entire character arc was about how alone she was. So does she think he's dead, despite being in Starfleet? Does he think she's dead? We literally don't know anything about him, and that wouldn't be a problem (because how much do we know about Elbrey or Henglaar or any non-established characters?) except Ro Laren was one of TNG's most compelling characters, and - as with the "remixes" of last season - comparison becomes inevitable.

* "Voyage of the Defiant" is... well, it's filler. It's a sequel to "The Tholian Web", and the original Defiant is recovered, and to be fair it makes more sense here than it does in that "Enterprise" Mirror Universe two-parter. But other than making Starfleet look completely incompetent by having them fall for the exact same tactic the Grey used in the season premiere, I'm not sure what this episode is meant to accomplish. On the surface, it establishes the Tholians as yet another hostile power for Starfleet to contend with in the Briar Patch, but given the sparse screen time given to the threats we've already seen, I'm far from convinced we needed another. And we get Luko in command of a Kirk-era ship, but he's obviously not going to keep the Defiant. And the Defiant's story is glossed over, so it's not actually about the Defiant either.

* As with last season, we end this one on a cliffhanger, but I'll save that for next time.

Overall, the third season of "Hidden Frontier" makes some changes that result in a better series: Knapp's promotion (rank) and demotion (screen time) is indicative of a larger, more gradual process where most of the characters from the first two seasons are being quietly shunted off in favor of newer faces: Henglaar and Elbrey are minimized, Martinez and Rawlins are swapped out for Luko and Aster, Shelby replaces Knapp while Naros occupies her former position and role in the crew dynamic. It's a stronger cast, not necessarily because they're being characterized any better than their predecessors, but because there's a difference between being a cipher and being an unbearably annoying cipher (*cough*knapp*cough*). "Voyage of the Defiant" aside, there's also a very clear and visible effort here to recreate the feel of Trek stories without remixing specific episodes (which was last season's primary weakness).

To be honest, while this series is improving, it's not happening quickly enough for my tastes: steps have been taken to make things better, and I certainly appreciate that, but... well, they're baby steps. At this point, I'm following "Hidden Frontier" more out of my commitment to review the project in full than out of any sense of fun I'm deriving from it. I wouldn't blame any other viewer for jumping ship at this point, with the caveat that we haven't jumped the shark just yet - theoretically, at this specific point in the series, it's still possible for "Hidden Frontier" to get so much better that its past mistakes can be overlooked. The potential is there; will next season finally seize it? Stay tuned!

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6a

2009-02-06T13:33:00.000-08:00

Well, the good news is that the second season of "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier" is a marginal improvement over the first. The bad news? It's largely because some of the episodes remix "The Next Generation" and "Deep Space 9". For example, "Yesterday's Excelsior" is basically TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise" only with Borg instead of Klingons; "Old Wound" is a take on DS9's "Rules of Engagement" where Worf is court-martialed for allegedly destroying a civilian transport, etc. It's an unfortunate creative decision, because I think the one thing fan films should avoid at all cost is inviting direct comparison to the source material; it's possible to let a lot of things slide when it comes to fan-created projects, but I'll never choose David Dial over Patrick Stewart, you know?

The cast has been juggled around a bit: after being promoted to Second Officer at the end of last season, Wesley's nowhere to be found; Rayvan the Iconian is also killed off-screen as an afterthought (pretty much a tacit acknowledgement that he was superfluous anyway), and we lose Toby Witzcak (sp?) midway through. Artim Ibanya, apparently a canon character from one of the later TNG films (the last one I saw was "First Contact"), is introduced as a new Ensign (Knapp is, of course, kind of a dick to him), and we also have a new Tactical Officer in Lieutenant Luko. Admiral Nechayev, another TNG import, assumes command of DS12.

And I've made this point before, but it bears repeating: a rotating, dynamic cast is a good thing. There's a lot of potential drama in the idea of characters disappearing into the night or suffering a quick and sudden death, leaving others to cope with the fallout. This was something "Exiles" did quite well during the Winick days: losing Thunderbird the first time was hard, and Blink's absence was felt every time Magik opened her mouth to cause trouble.

But for this tactic to work, you have to forge some kind of connection with the characters, an emotional attachment that gets you interested in them as people. "Hidden Frontier" is, at this point, still too concerned with plot machinery and doesn't offer enough "heart" for me to care about any of these changes.

The second season scales back the threat of the Grey considerably; as a result, after fifteen episodes we still know very little about them and their objectives. It might be because one element this series has lacked over the past two seasons is focus: the Federation's struggle against the Grey ostensibly glues the whole of "Hidden Frontier" together, and yet it's treated as an afterthought (if the Grey are mentioned at all) throughout the second season. Likewise, character moments occur in isolation, with no consistency from one episode to the next: Robin suffers a certain trauma in "The Great Starship Robbery" and it's never mentioned again, there's a Ro-centric episode after that except Ro has minimal screen time, and "To The Stars" delivers an origin story for Ibanya, a minor character whose presence is barely noteworthy. All of these represent what would ideally be the first step in an ongoing plotline, but they're completely scattered and, consequently, ineffective.

Noteworthy episodes:

* "Yesterday's Excelsior" does a cute '70s "Battlestar Galactica" homage, complete with the Colonial theme. It's worth noting that even in an alternate timeline, Knapp is an asshole. The episode is apparently missing its teaser due to... legal problems? I don't know, again, Caves seems to be dealing with problems no other fan production has had to cope with. Characterization of the Federation at large is also very problematic: we're supposed to believe Kirk-era Starfleet exterminated the Klingons en masse, and the present-day version abandons helpless civilizations to a superior threat. I'd applaud bringing the idealized United Federation of Planets down a notch, but this seems to go a little too far in the other direction.

* "Old Wound" has what may be the most contrived ending to a Trek courtroom drama ever.

* "Encke" introduces engineer Corey Aster as the first explicitly gay Starfleet officer we've seen (remember, this was filmed long before "Phase II"). When I reviewed "Blood and Fire" I mentioned that the two fan series treat the subject matter differently, and "Encke" is a perfect example: Ro is clearly conflicted about Corey's attraction to him, and it is about gender (contrary to what he says), which suggests that homosexuality is still seen as something "different". In "Phase II", it's just taken for granted that Alex and Peter are lovers, and the reaction would be exactly the same if Alex were a woman. To be honest, the treatment here is a bit on the clunky side, more concerned with The Issue than how said Issue affects the characters involved.

* "Fire in the Heart" is another Knapp-centric episode; surprise surprise, he's still a douchebag whose main concern during a reunion with his estranged daughter (after nine years of slavery!) is that she doesn't mess up his comfy life.

I hear ya, Captain.

In conclusion, I'm still seeing a lot of potential in this series, but so far they haven't capitalized on it. Maybe three's the lucky number?

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 6

2009-02-03T06:13:00.000-08:00

As promised, starting this week we'll be doing a season-by-season review of "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier", quite possibly the longest-running fan series currently available. I'm hoping to get a twice-weekly rhythm going, but that depends on my progress with various seminar papers and my commitment to the Savage Critics.

Series creator Rob Caves has a short note on the "Hidden Frontier" website, in which he asks viewers to start with the sixth season premiere, rather than season 1. Obviously, that's out of the question if you're doing a comprehensive review... but after briefly comparing the two, I can certainly understand Caves' request.

If "Phase II" impressed me in terms of how much it improved over time, the gap between the first and sixth seasons of "Hidden Frontier" is even more remarkable (granted, they'd been working at it for much longer than Cawley's group). But I don't want to go into that now, as it'll be far more relevant when we actually get to the later seasons; we should just keep that in mind as we go over Caves' earlier efforts. Because the first season of "Hidden Frontier" is a mess. I want to be charitable, I really do, but I can't find many redeeming qualities in the initial six episodes.

For starters, we have a fairly large cast of characters and yet there isn't a single sympathetic person in the bunch: Knapp, our Captain figure, is a douchebag of galactic proportions, and you'd think that was intentional except he never gets his comeuppance and he's not viewed in a negative light, despite the fact that he constantly berates his crew (when he's not abandoning them to die on hostile alien vessels) and he's way too trigger-happy for a starship captain. Robin Lefler, imported from "The Next Generation", quotes her Laws so often that it quickly goes from cute to annoying (Diana's Law #26: Don't speak in platitudes, because you can't eat an omlette without gaining some calories). Munoz, the cheerful first officer, disappears midway through the season and is replaced by Elizabeth Shelby (another "Next Generation" import), only this incarnation of the character lacks the backbone that made her such a great foil to then-Captain Riker. None of them act much like Starfleet officers, and the only characters who aren't unbearably annoying are Counselor Elbrey and Dr. Henglaar, who don't get enough screen time to make the most of their appeal.

The plot doesn't do much better, either on an episode-by-episode or season-wide basis: the three-part premiere is basically a rehash of the Dominion War, in which a new enemy - the Grey Confederacy - launches unprovoked attacks against the Federation. Unlike the Dominion, there's a far more parasitic nature to the Grey, as they mind-control humans in order to feed off their neural energy. That storyline is then interrupted so we can have a bizarre time-travel story involving the Titanic, and an episode featuring a visit from Darth Vader's flagship. The season finale reintroduces Wesley Crusher in an utterly disjointed storyline where the Tzenkethi demand access to the healing planet of Baku, for reasons that are neither known nor discovered, and then we abruptly segue to a Grey invasion of Tzenkethi space. This episode also recasts Lefler with an older actress, and that's an interesting choice, but Joanne Busch doesn't have enough screen time to leave an impression, good or bad.

On a technical level, I have to criticize the use of low-resolution Quicktime videos; Caves says this was done with an eye towards preventing the sale of pirated DVDs (which, in turn, could bring the Wrath of Paramount down on the whole production), but no other fan film I've seen so far seems to have this problem.

"Hidden Frontier" represents an interesting thematic departure from what we saw with "Of Gods and Men" and "Phase II". Those fan projects emphasized homage, recreating specific characters and getting as close to the "feel" of the original as possible. As I said, this series does feature characters from the canon series - Lefler, Shelby and Wesley Crusher - but they're secondary figures, and part of a mostly original ensemble. The setting's also quite distant from usual Trek fare: focus tends to alternate between the station, Deep Space 12, and the various ships assigned to that sector, which obviously allows for a much wider array of potential stories as it combines the fixed center as seen by "Deep Space 9" and exploring the unknown via starships. We'll see where that leads us.

All in all, it's off to a very awkward start; thanks to Caves' urging, I know the series will improve, but it's also true that there's a limit to how far one's patience can be stretched while waiting for things to get better. We'll have to see whether the second season has any kind of upward mobility in that sense; I can't see myself sitting through another two or three seasons as poor as this one.

Of The People...

2009-01-31T11:02:00.001-08:00

... is on a minor break this weekend, as the Gaping Maw of Academic Hell is threatening to swallow me whole. Look for a first-season review of "Hidden Frontier" late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

First Impressions: Being Human

2009-01-27T13:23:00.000-08:00

British TV's been on fire lately: after "No Heroics" and the superb "Survivors", this week marked the debut of BBC Three's Being Human, about a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost sharing a flat in Bristol.

This was actually a unique case for me, because a mix-up resulted in Ethan and I seeing the pilot episode released last year rather than this week's series premiere. And while I've managed to catch up, there are significant differences between the two episodes, so I've been left with two sets of opinions about the show.

I fell in love with "Being Human" about twenty minutes into the pilot, for so many reasons: the premise has Mitchell, a scrawny quasi-Goth vampire, working as a hospital janitor alongside his best friend George, a neurotic Jewish werewolf who can't find a safe place to let the beast out when the full moon comes. They're both struggling to live normal lives despite their respective curses and decide to move in together, only the flat they choose is haunted by Annie, a woman who may or may not have been murdered in that very house. Annie, like George and Mitchell, just wants to maintain some sense of herself as a person, so the three of them end up forming a rapport.

The pilot's tone is a surprisingly effective mesh of comedy and drama, alternating between lighter moments like George's hysterics and much darker situations (the Mitchell/Lauren subplot). The characters are given distinct and fleshed-out personalities with minimal exposition, and all three actors - Guy Flanagan as Mitchell, Russell Tovey as George and Andrea Riseborough as Annie - play their respective roles very well.

Which is where the problems start, because the series premiere ended up replacing two-thirds of the cast, switching in Aidan Turner as Mitchell and Lenora Crichlow as Annie. It's a mixed bag: Crichlow's version of Annie is a lot stronger and less twitchy than Riseborough's, but since George has the monopoly on neurosis anyway, it's probably a good thing to set her apart in that sense. Turner, on the other hand, is pretty much the archetypal Brooding Hunk, and I find that I prefered Flanagan's more sardonic, constantly-bemused performance, to say nothing of the amazing chemistry he had with his co-stars (seriously, this show's a Yaoi Fangirl's dream come true - HoYay is off the charts).

There's also a marked shift away from the comedic aspects of the pilot; George's hysterics are still amusing, but overall the premiere is much more serious. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, mind you, especially since they're not overdoing it the way, say, "Demons" does (okay, so Brit TV's winning streak might have a few speed bumps along the way).

But I liked the idea of a genuine comedy-drama hybrid with supernatural trappings; in shifting the paradigm towards the darker end of the spectrum, "Being Human" lost some of its charm simply by becoming more similar to things I've already seen. I'm sticking with it, because it's still an entertaining and well-written show, but I can't help wishing they'd have gone with the pilot instead...

Stolen from kradical at gunpoint

2009-01-25T09:51:00.001-08:00

Empire Magazine has revealed its list of the 50 Greatest TV Shows ever.

1. Bold the shows you watch/used to watch.
2. Italicize the shows you've seen at least one episode of.
3. Underline the shows you own on DVD (or VCR tape).
4. Post your answers.

50. Quantum Leap
49. Prison Break
48. Veronica Mars
47. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
46. Sex & The City
45. Farscape
44. Cracker
43. Star Trek
42. Only Fools and Horses
41. Band of Brothers
40. Life on Mars
39. Monty Python
38. Curb Your Enthusiasm
37. Star Trek: The Next Generation
36. Father Ted
35. Alias
34. Frasier
33. CSI Las Vegas
32. Babylon 5
31. Deadwood
30. Dexter
29. ER
28. Fawlty Towers
27. Six Feet Under
26. Red Dwarf
25. Futurama
24. Twin Peaks
23. The Office
22. The Shield
21. Angel
20. Blackadder
19. Scrubs
18. Arrested Development
17. South Park
16. Doctor Who
15. Heroes
14. Firefly
13. Battlestar Galactica
12. Family Guy
11. Seinfeld
10. Spaced
09. The X-Files
08. The Wire
07. Friends
06. 24
05. Lost
04. The West Wing
03. The Sopranos
02. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
01. The Simpsons

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 5

2009-01-23T02:10:00.000-08:00

Four episodes in, "Star Trek: Phase II" (formerly known as "New Voyages") and its creator, James Cawley, have gained quite a reputation in the field of fan films. And not undeservedly so.

"Phase II" is remarkable for several reasons. It's the first example we've had of a proper fan series - all of the works I've reviewed so far were clearly conceived either as feature films or miniseries with a set conclusion. "Phase II" is an ongoing series, and as a series it gets to demonstrate something most fan works can't: improvement over time. The differences between the first and second episodes of "Phase II" are nothing short of astonishing in the sense that every aspect of the production gets better: by the third episode, it's pretty much up there with Roddenberry's original series.

Like "Of Gods and Men", "Phase II" serves as a useful example of how Trek fans recreate rather than innovate: the premise is that "Phase II" depicts the last two years of the Enterprise's original five-year mission (never filmed due to the series' cancellation). So it's Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the gang continuing their adventures, very much an extension of the Shatner series; it should be interesting to compare "Phase II" to the upcoming movie when it comes out, because you have two very different groups (with, we may presume, different agendas) telling stories about the same characters, roughly at the same time.

Unlike "Of Gods and Men", the primary roles have been recast, though Cawley's series still interfaces very deeply with canon, as we'll soon see. Since it's not a very long series (especially in comparison to next week's feature), I thought it might be interesting to do an episode-by-episode review and see what emerges.

1. Come What May/In Harm's Way: Listed together here are the pilot for "New Voyages" (as it was known at the time) and the first "official" episode. I'll be upfront about these: they're not very good. Everything's a bit off - the lighting's too strong, the acting's too weak, James Cawley (Kirk) sports a disturbing Elvis quaff, the plot's so disjointed all you get are scenes that fail to mesh into a coherent whole... the CGI's impressive, so there's that, and "In Harm's Way" had Gene Roddenberry Jr. as consulting producer, cameos by William Windom (reprising the role of Commodore Decker) and BarBara Luna (Marlena Moreau of "Mirror Mirror"), and while I haven't been able to confirm this, apparently Sam Witwer of "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" and "Battlestar Galactica" voiced the Guardian of Forever. Not a bad grab for the first time out, but it's still a very, very rough start.

There's not much point in providing summaries of either episode, due to the shoddy plotting, but we might as well go with it: in "Come What May", the Enterprise stumbles across a continuing battle between Onabi, a flirtatious girl with Q-like powers, and a threat she calls the Monap (though the design is unmistakably that of a Borg ship). She seems to know a lot about what the future holds for Kirk and his crew, but aside from some babble about possible futures, nothing really comes of this. So Onabi hangs around for a while, turns into an Orion dancing girl in an attempt to seduce Kirk, and then she goes back to her ship and disappears along with the Monap. That's about it. Rather anticlimactic - I get the feeling the whole point of that episode was the montage near the end where Cawley and Jeffery Quinn (Spock) get to play out a sequence of scenes from the first batch of Star Trek movies (ie: Spock's death and resurrection, the anti-Klingon conspiracy in... was it the fifth or the sixth? And, of course, Kirk's death scene in "Generations").

"In Harm's Way" is a direct sequel to an episode of the original episode, specifically "The Doomsday Machine", but there's almost no context to explain what's going on. Memory Alpha to the rescue once again, though having the background information doesn't really help here because, again, the story is extremely muddled, with some interesting ideas lost in the rapid shuffle.

And yet... despite their shortcomings, these episodes are worth wathcing for the glimpse they provide of the project's potential: at first, it seems the creators' reach is exceeding their grasp, which is a fair enough assessment, but you can also see the germ of something better in the making, and "Phase II" certainly delivers on that promise with later episodes.

2. To Serve All My Days: This episode marks two major changes for "Phase II". First, this is where the series really starts interfacing with canon: Walter Koenig guest-stars as Chekov, while former Trek writer D.C. Fontana contributed the script.

But the far more significant issue has to do with episode quality; in every area, "To Serve All My Days" represents improvement on a quantum level. The visuals are sleek and polished, there's a greater emphasis on the characters, and the acting is more refined - Andy Bray is excellent as a young and insecure Chekov, while Cawley's Kirk is approaching that Shatner-esque mix of camp and uber-gravitas (and he'll get it just right starting next episode). John Kelley's McCoy could stand to be a bit crankier, but he's a lot younger here, so we can let that one slide.

The plot's still a bit clunky, with a rapid-aging disease that quite literally comes out of nowhere and a B-plot that would've been a great start to an ongoing Myth Arc, except - as kazekage points out here - "Star Trek" didn't really start doing those until late into "Deep Space 9" (owing, apparently, to the influence of "Babylon 5"). "Phase II" seems to deliver an anti-arc where nothing flows from one episode to the next: a major character dies here, only to return the very next episode with no explanation. As I recall, resetting to the status quo at the end of every story was standard practice during the Shatner run (in fairness, a general aversion to lasting change is typical of most late '60s and early '70s TV), so in that sense "Phase II" is remaining true to the structure of its template, but... well, why bother creating the illusion of change only to undermine it immediately afterwards? It's refreshing to see a situation that isn't resolved through contrivance and technobabble, but I'm not sure ignoring it altogether to get on with the show was the best decision.

3. World Enough and Time: Now this is where "Phase II" really hits its stride. Guest-starring George Takei as Sulu, Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand, and Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (in one of her final roles) as the ship's computer, it might be a bit much to do two rapid-aging stories in a row, but this episode is so entertaining that I can't begrudge the contrivance. It really feels like an episode of "Star Trek", both in terms of appearance and plot, and unlike "To Serve All My Days", there is a typical explanation (albeit delivered in Trekspeak, but at least it's there). Takei delivers a superb performance, as always, and while Alanna is clearly doomed from the get-go (precisely because we know the status quo is going to be restored by the end of the episode), Christina Moses' performance still manages to evoke a great deal of sympathy.

4. Blood and Fire Part 1: This is the first episode released as "Phase II". It's a name with some history attached to it, having to do with Roddenberry's planned relaunch of the series following its original cancellation (the seeds of which eventually became the first "Star Trek" movie). So we're once again given a statement of intent here: to be faithful to the original, to tell the same types of stories Roddenberry might have told, to be seen as an extension of the past rather than a reconfiguration or a modernization of that past.

In other news, Uhura and Spock have been recast; while Kim Stinger acquits herself as well as can be expected given Uhura's minimal role thus far, Ben Tolpin disappoints as Spock, as he can't quite manage the ever-calm, ever-neutral facade Leonard Nimoy and Jeffery Quinn (and, I expect, Zachary Quinto) did so well. Fortunately, based on preview information for upcoming episodes, the role will be recast yet again after the second half of "Blood and Fire", so we'll see how that works out.

This is the episode that drew my attention to "Phase II" in the first place, due to the publicity storm surrounding a certain subplot. I am, of course, referring to Kirk's nephew Peter coming aboard the Enterprise to marry his boyfriend.

Most "Star Trek" viewers with a mild interest in this particular issue probably know how the legend goes: Gene Roddenberry had planned to feature gay characters in "Star Trek: The Next Generation", under the (hopefully accurate) belief that homosexuality would be entirely normalized in the 24th century. David Gerrold had penned a script called "Blood and Fire", which - according to reports - had a few lines of dialogue discussing a relationship between two male crew members. Unfortunately, network television of the early '90s wasn't the most supporting environment for taking creative or social risks, and the episode was censored. There's a widespread opinion that, had Roddenberry lived, he would've eventually succeeded in getting a gay character into the Trekverse, but that never materialized during the subsequent tenure of Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, unless you count the women of the Mirror Universe, and I don't, because that was just puerile fanservice. (Nana Visitor actually pointed out that turning Mirror Kira into a hedonistic bisexual sort of missed the point, because in the first DS9 Mirror episode her attraction to the "real" Kira is pure narcissism.)

In any event, Gerrold eventually reworked his script for the Kirk era (which would've been even more unthinkable, given the way people reacted when Kirk and Uhura kissed that one time), and here it is. This is very much a situation where fandom "picks up the slack", as it were: the Internet as a medium isn't subject to morally outraged Christian families or sponsors or network executives, it's very much an arena where any theme, any content, can be explored. I should note, though, that "Phase II" isn't exactly breaking new ground: fan series "Hidden Frontier", which started in 2001, had an ongoing love triangle between three men throughout its run. In fact, Bobby Rice - the actor who plays Peter Kirk in "Blood and Fire" - also played one of the characters in that triangle, though the role originated with another actor (but we'll talk about that when we start reviewing "Hidden Frontier" next week).

So what we have here is a case where two completely unrelated fan productions picked up the same theme and used it, albeit in very different ways (we'll go into greater detail about those different approaches when it becomes relevant to "Hidden Frontier"). And here's the thing: homosexuality isn't necessarily the issue critics had with "Star Trek", it's not something that absolutely demanded to be addressed in the vein of women or ethnicity in "Star Wars", yet it's something both projects felt obliged to explore.

"Phase II" follows Roddenberry's alleged perspective on the matter (ie: who cares?) so Peter and Alex have a completely conventional, if slightly sappy relationship (seriously, postponing your wedding until after an away mission to a ship whose entire crew died under mysterious circumstances? Might as well paint a bullseye on your forehead and scream "VICTIM HERE! VICTIM HERE!"). The word "gay" doesn't even exist in this milieu - Cawley plays Kirk's reaction to the news as having to do with Peter's youth (and probably Kirk's own relationship issues as well, especially in light of what happened with Alanna last episode). But there's no distinction between types of relationships here, and that's a paradigm I whole-heartedly embrace.

(As an aside, that's what "Hidden Frontier" did differently: homosexuality is socially acceptable, but still viewed as "alternative" in that one of the men has to struggle for a very long time before coming to terms with same-sex attraction. "Phase II" implies the opposite, that no one sees any difference.)

Like "World Enough and Time", this episode looks and feels right: from the opening battle with the Klingon warship, to the "creature feature" horror of the Bloodworms, "Blood and Fire" is perhaps as close to the source material as is humanly possible without time machines; the days of pointy Elvis 'dos and bad lighting are long over.

For the next few installments (which I might condense into a twice-weekly thing depending on my pace and time considerations) we'll review "Star Trek: Hidden Frontier", quite possibly the longest fan series available: fifty episodes divided into seven seasons, plus no less than three spin-offs running concurrently.

Let the good times roll

2009-01-20T13:08:00.000-08:00

Out with the old, in with the new! It's time to leave the mistakes of the past behind us, to draw a line under all the ugliness and stupidity we've had to endure, because a new day has come! At last! We waited for it, we hoped against hope that it would happen, and now it's finally here! Today will go down in history as the day things changed for the better!

Written by JEFF PARKER
Penciled by SALVADOR ESPIN
Cover by DAVE BULLOCK
Heroes are being pulled out of the worlds they know- The Beast. The Witch. Panther. Forge. Polaris. All find themselves in a place out of time with a new mission in life. But something seems to have shifted in the mechanics of the universe, things may not be quite what we remember... But one thing we know for certain- BLINK is BACK! Plus 8 pages of Director's Cut Extras!

...

Oh, did some other important thing happen today? Well, that's nice too...

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 4

2009-01-16T08:16:00.000-08:00

This week we're breaking away from "Star Wars" (at least for a while) and turning to the other giant of sci-fi TV, "Star Trek". Based on what I've found so far, these two franchises seem to produce very different types of fan films.

Generally speaking, "Star Wars" fan productions tend to demarcate canon and fandom very clearly - I'm not just talking about the obvious gaps in visual effects, but in terms of story, films like "Revelations" and "Dark Resurrection" are less interested in recreating what George Lucas put on the screen, instead focusing on innovation, inserting new twists and concepts into familiar settings. As a result, there's a great distance between the source material and the way each fan production uses that material.

The "Star Trek" franchise, curiously enough, seems to have the opposite effect on its fans, because that line between canon and fandom gets considerably blurred. Today's fan film serves as a perfect example: Renegade Studios' Of Gods and Men. This fan film is remarkable - and problematic - for several reasons, but let's start with the basics: the plot.

Twelve years after James Kirk's death, Uhura, Chekov and John Harriman reunite aboard a museum ship modeled after the original Enterprise. They're summoned to a familiar planet, where an old enemy of Kirk's goes back in time and changes history. We then find ourselves in a dystopian alternate timeline where the Federation has been usurped by the Galactic Order, a tyrannical organization that bullies and intimidates entire populations to maintain "security". Our three heroes - now living completely different lives - have only the vaguest memories to guide them, and must find a way to restore the timeline.

"Of Gods and Men" could have easily served as an episode (or two) of the Shatner-era "Star Trek" - its plot structure is very similar, right down to the convenient deus ex machina that ultimately resets the status quo. If "Star Wars" productions try to step out of Lucas' shadow, "Of Gods and Men" (like other "Star Trek" fan films we'll be talking about in the coming weeks) seems to embrace the source material, to the extent that it tries to recreate that fictional universe without redefining it at all.

I'm curious as to why this is the case - why "Star Trek" generates the sort of loyalty where adaptation and homage are prioritized over... not originality per se but that whole process of using the extra-canonical position to address blind spots and bypass network-imposed constraints. It's not as though "Star Trek" doesn't have a large Expanded Universe of its own - in fact, I'm reasonably sure that its output in novel format is considerably larger than "Star Wars" - but "Star Wars" fan-creators use that largely-obscure playground to get away from Luke Skywalker and that whole familiar milieu. "Star Trek" fans run in the other direction.

This might have something to do with the memory of Gene Roddenberry; on the whole, fandom seems more inclined to remember him fondly as opposed to the oft-vilified (and perhaps not unjustly so, given the whole Jar-Jar Binks thing) George Lucas. I also imagine some degree of sensitivity is called for when the creator whose fictional world you're entering into is gone. But there could also be a completely diegetic reason for this: the flaws of the "Star Trek" universe, while numerous, aren't as grossly obvious as those of "Star Wars", in the sense that the "problem areas" of Roddenberry's creation don't necessarily demand immediate correction. I mean, we've covered the issue of women in "Star Wars", and Kirk's series was very much a product of its time, but women are represented with much higher frequency starting with "The Next Generation", and if they're not exactly on equal ground there, "Deep Space 9" gives us Kira Nerys, and Kathryn Janeway would've made a much more positive impression if the writers hadn't saddled her with the Idiot Ball of Bitchery after a season or two. In fairness, this is a franchise that four decades to evolve, across twenty or thirty seasons of television and ten films, while Lucas only had those two trilogies to work with... on the other hand, the twenty-year gap between "Return of the Jedi" and "The Phantom Menace" should have pushed "Star Wars" a lot further forward than it did.

Let's go back to the whole process of adaptation. One example, with regards to "Of Gods and Men", is the high amount of intertextuality with the original series; in fact, there's so much continuity that if you're not familiar with specific episodes (ie: "Charlie X"), I don't know if you'll really understand what's going on here. I had to make extensive use of Memory Alpha to figure stuff out, and the whole principle of having to research the finer points of a story is something I find problematic. So points off for that, at least from the perspective of a casual viewer: more dedicated fans will probably be very pleased at how strong those connections are. It also reinforces the notion that we're meant to see this film as a natural extension of the series, rather than a conscious step away from the conventions and tropes that defined the source material.

Another way that "Of Gods and Men" diminishes the boundaries between canon and fandom has to do with its cast, featuring a frankly astonishing number of "Star Trek" alumni from every series: Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koening, Alan Ruck, Tim Russ (also the film's director), Garrett Wang, J.G. Hertzler, Chase Masterson, Gary Graham, Cirroc Lofton and many others. There's even a bit of fan film crossover, as "Phase II" stars James Cawley and Jeffery Quinn put in cameos (more on "Phase II" next week). The entire project has an air of camaraderie about it, of iconic actors freely and gladly participating in a celebration of the series.

All of this creates an interesting dilemma: is "Of Gods and Men" a fan film? Most of its cast and crew came from "Star Trek" in the first place; granted, it's not backed by Paramount, but so what? Visually, it takes its cues from the '60s incarnation, and by those standards it looks better than any episode of the original series. It doesn't do anything "Star Trek" didn't or couldn't do on its own (with the possible exception of Xela, the Orion slave woman, being portrayed as the real power behind Harriman's captaincy in the alternate timeline - that was a nice twist on a traditionally icky aspect of the Trekverse). What is it, then, that separates "Of Gods and Men" from canon at all? Not script quality - even when it stumbles, it still does so more gracefully than some of the clunkers in the original series. Not the use of amateur actors, because even bit characters like Stonn are played by their original actors. Resources? Maybe, but... eh, I've said all along that I don't like to bring the financial aspect into the reviews, because creativity tends to find ways around budget-oriented obstacles.

I don't really have an answer to that question, and it's one that'll pop up again in the coming weeks. The level of interaction between Trek canon and Trek fandom runs deep, and that problematizes my initial definition of what a fan film is: here, unlike "Star Wars" fan films (and, on a broader level, all fan fiction), the goal isn't to modify the fictional world on any level, or to plug any ontological gaps that were never addressed on-screen. Rather, it seems simulacra is the objective here: how close can you get to the original? How much does your production feel like "Star Trek"?

On that level, "Of Gods and Men" feels very much like the real thing; "Star Trek" always had a knack for decent, if not consistently good, alternate timeline stories, and this one's no exception.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 3

2009-01-09T01:02:00.000-08:00

Slight change of plans: since I only had one more "Star Wars" fan film on my list (at least for now), I figured I might as well wrap up this particular franchise before moving on to "Star Trek" next week (and I hope to discuss, in a later segment, why these two particular series seem to have generated the highest volume of fan-produced work - far more so than, say, "Battlestar Galactica", "Heroes" or even "Doctor Who" and "Torchwood").

And while I didn't plan it this way, it turns out the best has been saved for last, as today's feature film is Angelo Licata's Dark Resurrection.

If I didn't know "Dark Resurrection" was a fan film, I think I'd be fooled - that's how professional it looks. The CGI's flawless, the camera work is studio-level, the actors play their roles well, and while the story has a few holes in it, it holds together under scrutiny. Yes, it's in Italian, and the English subtitles can be a bit awkward at times, but that's hardly Licata's fault.

The premise of "Dark Resurrection" concerns Sorran, the most powerful Jedi Master of his era. He's become obsessed with finding the Temple of Eron, a place that can supposedly transform people into living embodiments of the Force. Having sacrificed countless apprentices in vain efforts to find the Temple, Sorran finds himself opposed by the Jedi Council, but when they try to shut him down everything goes south. Some time later (or maybe not, we'll get to that in a bit), Jedi Master Zui Mar and his apprentice Hope stumble onto Eron only to find they're not alone; meanwhile, Sorran and his Sith minion Lord Drown join up with a renewed Empire to invade Keys, the central world of the Jedi Order.

Here's where we hit our first hitch: it's very difficult to construct a proper timeline of the events depicted in this film, because Licata is very, very fond of flashbacks. To be fair, this being part 1 of a duology, I fully expect the second half to be less problematic in this respect, but the fact remains that there's no clear chain of events - the film opens with Sorran and the Council, but we have no way of knowing when that happens in relation to the rest of the movie. Has it been days? Months? Years? Organa has a lengthy flashback relating to Hope's childhood, but we have no visual markers to separate past and present events, or how each of the past events fit together. The final scene of Hope in the Temple is equally confusing, and it might take two or three viewings to sort everything out.

Once again we have women front-and-center in a "Star Wars" fan film: Organa and Nemer seem to be running the remnants of the Jedi Order, with Hope as the protagonist. And while we've seen female apprentices before - canonically with the ill-fated and ill-timed Ahsoka, and non-canonically with the aforementioned Karina (and, to a lesser extent, Taryn) - Licata adds a small detail to Hope's backstory that completely changes the way we see her. SPOILER ALERT: why is Zui Mar so determined to stamp out Hope's fear and anger? Because she's a product of the same process that created Anakin Skywalker - conceived through the Force via the Jedi Council as a way of stopping Sorran, and therefore potentially more powerful than any Jedi or Sith. For all intents and purposes, Anakin Skywalker's backstory is attached to a woman who - like Anakin - struggles with the boundary between aggression and tranquility, but - unlike Anakin - isn't obnoxiously bratty about it. On the contrary, Hope is sympathetic precisely because Marcella Braga really manages to communicate her character's internal conflict, something Hayden Christensen was never really able to do.

I think Angelo Licata's objective here is twofold: first, to tell a "Star Wars" story outside the context of the established canon. Now, apparently there's a whole section of the Expanded Universe that takes place some five thousand years earlier, which... I need to check that out, because I'm genuinely curious as to how that would work. And the "Legacy" comic is set a century later. But "Dark Resurrection" goes even further, and the time jump helps because Licata doesn't have to rely on familiar characters and iconic moments - the focus instead turns to the film's own cast. This wasn't really possible with "Revelations" or "Knightquest" since Taryn, Zhannah, Dannikk and Karina had to share both their screen time and their origins with the Emperor, Darth Vader and other characters who were around at that point in the "Star Wars" timeline (and, more importantly, who were most likely to be highly visible during said point).

The other possible objective for "Dark Resurrection" may have to do with its total disregard of any political context: there's no Rebel Alliance, no Separatists, not even a mention of any kind of Republic. The Empire still exists, but they're depicted as a defeated force making a last, desperate grab for power. This particular fan film focuses entirely on the Jedi and the Force, aligning itself more with fantasy than science-fiction. It's an interesting shift in tone, and one that largely succeeds (if only because Lucas bludgeoned any possible interest in the politics of the Star Wars universe by the time "Attack of the Clones" came out).

So in that sense, "Dark Resurrection" does achieve what it seems to be aiming for - glitchy plot structure aside, it does some fairly incredible things given limited resources and cultural differences (because I doubt Italians and Americans interpret "Star Wars" the same way), and I can't wait for the second half.

Open For Business

2009-01-08T23:46:00.000-08:00

Kazekage, the Waldorf to my Statler, has opened his very own blog, Witless Prattle.

Picture if you will, the planet of New Genesis. Now wipe the blood off your nose and picture New Genesis before FINAL CRISIS. That's better. You're walking through the halls of Highfather's domain. Birds are chirping, Orion is brooding, Barda is trying to fit her hair through a small door, all's right with the world.

At last you arrive at the Wall of Prophecy, where the Big Giant Hand of Jack Kirby delivers cryptic messages to gods who fail to understand that BEWARE DIDIO is not a warning against the use of sex toys on New Genesis.

And there, scrawled in fiery letters by a shining manicured finger, you see the following:

FOR A GOOD TIME READ KAZEKAGE.

'Nuff said.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 2

2009-01-02T14:47:00.000-08:00

I've decided to keep this feature on a weekly schedule, as it'll give me time to prepare for the surprisingly large fan series I've got in the pipeline. In the meantime, let's stick with "Star Wars" for a bit - specifically Joe Monroe's "Knightquest".

I picked this film specifically because it serves as an interesting counterpoint to "Revelations", and demonstrates that fan films - for all the effort that's put into them - can still fall short due to lack of... well, I'm not sure, exactly. Imagination? Ambition? Resources? Difficult to say, but we'll try and parse that out here.

The plot of "Knightquest" is quite simple: Tarra Sunar is a smuggler who helped Jedi Master Ulic Cinn and his two apprentices, Karina and Dannikk, escape the Empire's persecution of the Jedi. Unfortunately, she falls for the old "concealed tracker" bit, and ends up leading Darth Vader right to them. You can probably guess how it turns out.

One thing I found particularly appealing about "Knightquest" is that it really manages to create an aura of terror and dread around Darth Vader, something I think the prequel films stripped away - even when Hayden Christensen finally goes dark (although, with his lack of affectation, the only way you actually know he's evil is because everyone else says so) and slaughters a bunch of Jedi, it's played so loudly, so in-your-face and over-the-top, that it doesn't work at all.

Here, though, we have Vader as a hunter, in an appropriately jungle-themed setting, and it's set close enough to the first "Star Wars" that you really get a sense of claustrophobia from Cinn and the kids - they have nowhere to run, no shelter that'll hide them, no friends left to protect them.

Unfortunately, the film trips up as it comes down to the climax(es). Setting aside the obvious problem of innovation - how much can you really add in a story where it's been canonically established that Vader completely annihilated the Jedi? - "Knightquest" treads water in its final act, as Vader gives the same "Convert or Die" speech three times in a row (DUH-LEVEL SPOILER: everyone refuses) and then gets on with his work. Tarra's the only character whose fate wasn't necessarily set in stone, but she gets written out almost as an afterthought.

Basically, "Knightquest" lacks any kind of originality, which is why it makes such a neat parallel with "Revelations", because the latter could surprise you (albeit by contradicting and toying with canon, but still, the results speak for themselves). "Knightquest" doesn't offer anything you can't get from the movies, and that - to me, at least - misses the whole point of fan films. It's not addressing something the canon overlooked, it's not putting any kind of twist on the familiar material... the question I find myself asking here is "What is this fan film trying to do? What is it trying to say?" And I don't have a solid answer to that beyond "Wouldn't it be cool to have some more Vader/Jedi duels?" I'm not sure if that's all this is supposed to be - in which case, Monroe pretty much accomplishes his goal - or if he was aiming for something higher and missed.

Next week we'll switch franchises for a bit and take a look at a particularly intriguing fan series from the "Star Trek" universe.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Part 1

2008-12-25T03:14:00.000-08:00

Now that we've gotten the preliminaries out of the way, it's time to start reviewing. Our first fan film is Star Wars: Revelations, a 47-minute movie set between the two trilogies, courtesy of Panic Struck Productions.

As it was produced prior to the release of "Revenge of the Sith", the main purpose of "Revelations" is to explain how the Empire hunted the Jedi into total extinction by the time Luke Skywalker reached his teens. This is a fair enough question: it's a big universe, but even the Expanded Universe novels adhered to the idea that Luke had to rebuild the Jedi from scratch because none of the "old guard" survived the Clone Wars.

Insofar as that question is concerned, "Revelations" provides a logical answer by establishing the existence of a sub-group within the Jedi known as Seers - Jedi whose Force-related specialty is seeing the future. The Seers, led by a man named Sakal, were basically excommunicated by the Order because their predictions were thought to be unreliable (but as it turns out, they were all having visions of the Empire's rise to power, and no one believed them).

Taryn Anwar, the film's protagonist, is a Seer hunting for Sakal's Holocron, a cube-shaped data matrix that contains great knowledge (and, potentially, great power as well). Taryn hooks up with Declan, a smuggler, and another man named Cade who is either a defecting Stormtrooper or a fugitive Jedi (that part's a bit unclear). We also learn that Cade was the lover of Taryn's sister Raux, a victim of the Empire's purges.

But Taryn's not the only one looking for the Holocron. Zhannah, one of the Emperor's Hands, is competing with Darth Vader to find both Taryn and the artifact. As it turns out, Zhannah and Taryn have a history: the Emperor's Hand tricked Taryn into using her visions to find other Jedi, who were promptly exterminated by the Empire.

The backstory has a few minor timeline glitches - namely, we have no idea when Sakal and the Seers were cast out; sometimes it seems to have happened during Taryn's lifetime, but there are also references to the Sith Wars which happened thousands of years prior to the prequel trilogy. We're also not sure how long Taryn has been on the run, and whether or not Zhannah's been tracking her all that time. But as I said, these are minor distractions, not especially noteworthy given the pace and progress of the storyline. I'd say a bigger problem is that the distinction between Jedis and Seers gets pretty blurred by the time we get to the climax - Taryn's visions pretty much stop right before they could become relevant to the plot.

However, if the film's own internal continuity is problematic, it does manage some nice tricks with established canon: there's a scene around the midway point where the Emperor disbands the Senate. If you recall the first "Star Wars", this means the Death Star is complete. Now, the scene seems a bit tacked-on... until the epilogue of "Revelations", in which two characters decide to head to Alderaan. It's a sad moment, but only the viewer knows that.

While I said I wasn't going to talk about production values, "Revelations" merits a mention simply because it looks like a "Star Wars" movie. The CGI lacks the fluidity of professional studios, but is impressive nevertheless; the TIE Fighter chase through the shipyards and the lightsaber duels are surprisingly similar to the general look and feel of "Star Wars". Special props go to the actors who recreated Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader - they did so very convincingly.

Here's something I found interesting about "Revelations": both the main protagonist and the main antagonist of the film are women. And... okay, tangent time. I've had a problem with women in "Star Wars" for a long, long time. Leia didn't particularly impress me; Amidala even less so. The Expanded Universe isn't very accomodating either: Asajj Ventress had the makings of an interesting character but lapsed into 2D Land more often than not, Mara Jade is Timothy Zahn's Mary Sue, Mon Mothma's a bit player despite her supposedly legendary backstory... and then you have Admiral Daala, probably the biggest face-palm Kevin J. Anderson ever earned in the Star Wars universe. He makes a big deal about Daala being the only woman ever promoted to the Imperial admiralty, ostensibly on the strength of her impressive tactical skills, and then she turns out to be so incompetent she can't even score minor wins against the New Republic. I'll go so far as to say that if there's one decent, well-rounded woman in "Star Wars", it's Jaina Solo: badass Jedi, navigates her own love life without any help (*cough*Mara*cough*), swerves to the Dark Side and pulls herself out by sheer force of will, and basically becomes the greatest Jedi Knight of her generation.

Unfortunately, Jaina doesn't exist outside the projected future of the novels - a period no other medium or spin-off seems to want to deal with. So, perhaps as a response to that, "Revelations" gives us Taryn, a more compelling character than Luke or Anakin because of her redemption subplot (Anakin just whined a lot, and Luke... well, Luke's the Chosen One because he's born to it, not because of anything he actually does). Zhannah's an interesting counterpart to Vader, and "Revelations" does offer us a scene where they share screen time to highlight the contrast: he's this huge, booming, imposing presence, whereas Zhannah is ice-cold, detached and subtle - the role could have easily degenerated into one of those scene-chomping bits where you can actually see the teeth marks on the set pieces, but the actress playing Zhannah never loses her cool, never breaks character.

All in all, it's a rather enjoyable piece. The story's about average - standard fare for "Star Wars", really - and the cast avoids the sort of awkwardness you can sometimes get with amateur actors. Throw in some surprisingly good special effects, an overall length that's just about right (not too short that we're left unsatisfied with the results, not too long that it starts to drag), and what you get is a pretty decent justification of the genre.

Of The People, By The People, For The People: Prologue

2008-12-24T12:11:00.000-08:00

I've decided to start a new feature here at Sententia: fan film reviews. Much like fan fiction, it's a phenomenon that fascinates me both as a reader and as a student of literature.

There are a few "ground rules" I suppose I should get out of the way first: I'm not especially interested in comparing these productions to the source material in terms of visual quality. It's fair enough to do that sort of parallel with text-based fanfic when words - and how they're used - are the only tangible difference between a fan-author and the original author; I hardly think it's realistic to expect fan-level productions to match the CGI budget of Paramount or Lucasfilm (though, if tomorrow's subject is any indication, they can come surprisingly close).

I'm also leaving acting skills (or lack thereof) out of the equation unless it absolutely merits a mention - in a world where Hayden Christensen passed the first round of auditions for the role of Darth Vader, it's best to judge such things on their own merits.

The guiding principle behind these reviews relates to my overall concept of fan fiction as something that exists to address a gap in the source material - whether these are issues and themes the canon can't (or won't) deal with, or scenes and scenarios that didn't textually happen but could have (or, depending on the genre of the story, couldn't have) happened. But it's always a response to something within the original work.

I should note that I find fan fiction to be as valid and as legitimate an exercise as, say, the Expanded Universe novels of the "Star Wars" franchise. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the only difference between the EU novels and "Star Wars" fanfic is that the EU writers get paid and presumably have the parent company's seal of approval - not the most convincing argument, as these things have nothing to do with what's actually published.

In fact, it's interesting to see how EU novels of this sort can fall into the same traps as fanfic - Timothy Zahn is rightly praised for the creation of Grand Admiral Thrawn, but he also inflicted Mara Sue upon us. And it's just as impossible to achieve consensus with published novels: just because you get a rubber stamp from Grandpa George doesn't mean you're not working with your own interpretations of the characters, which may or may not correlate to other authors' interpretations, or even to what the original material (the two trilogies) present. Canon becomes just as malleable as it is in fanfic, and the only thing that matters is whether or not the writer convinces you that his version works.

And, of course, the EU novels were a response to what was likely the most common question anyone was asking at the end of "Return of the Jedi" - what happened next? (Or possibly "Did we really need all those Ewoks?"). Sequels are easy that way. But with fan films, it's a bit more complicated to figure out exactly what they're responding to with regards to the source material.

You may have noticed that I've been focusing on the "Star Wars" franchise pretty exclusively so far. That's because our first entry, to be posted tomorrow, will be a review of Star Wars: Revelations by Panic Struck Productions, located here:

http://panicstruckpro.com/revelations/

Fight of the Century

2008-12-20T07:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.marvel.com/blogs/Tom_Brevoort/entry/1351

Laaaaaaaadies and gentlemen!

In this cornah, weighing in at an astonishing 925 pounds (ego included), the Fighting Fossil, John Byrne!

And in this cornah, weighing in at 101 pounds, the Suffolk Succotash, Tom Brevoort!

Just so we know where we all stand, John Byrne puts out a list of changes he'd like to see at Marvel - some of which are common sense, and some of which betray Byrne's hilariously outdated storytelling style; like his old partner Chris Claremont, Byrne is very much a man of his time who's failed to keep up. And unlike Claremont, whose kitschy histrionics are good for a laugh, Byrne takes himself so seriously - honestly, just look at his last projects for DC - that it's no wonder he's been pushed to the margins of the industry.

And then you have Tom Brevoort, who - bless his inefficient little soul - at least tries to tell stories with modern sensibilities. He fails, of course, and spectacularly so, much as Paul O'Brien and Al Kennedy pointed out: more often than not a Brevoort-edited comic will bear no sign of actually having been proof-read, to the extent that writers will go to Newsarama and talk about fairly interesting concepts and plotlines that never actually materialize in the published comic. Some of Marvel's most embarrassing fuster-clucks occured on Brevoort's watch, and while he may not have displayed the utter incompetence of Mike Marts during Chuck Austen's Reign of Error on the X-books, this is someone who I hold at least partially responsible for the utter mediocrity of Marvel's output at the moment.

In other words, I wouldn't trust either of these clowns to see us through a transition to products of a better quality, not from a writer who can't get with the times and an editor who can't seem to put his foot down and say "Uh, Brian, you're basically saying the invasion we've been building up all year ends with one fight?"

If you really want to "fix" Marvel, the first thing you need to do is ditch the fanboys. By which I mean Quesada, Bendis, Millar, the writers who are acting out their adolescent rewrites of '70s and '80s Marvel and who can't seem to let go of that period - whether it's Quesada not being able to "identify" with a married Peter Parker or Bendis bringing back that bloody Mockingbird as if anyone born after 1983 knows who the hell she is... that whole block of non-creativity has got to go. We need fresh ideas, fresh writers with the balls to rip out the damned rewind button on the remote and just press Play already. Enough retcons, enough revisions, enough rewrites. Leave the past alone and look ahead for once.

And we need editors with backbone. Editors who do their job and actually give the comic a once-over before hitting it with the rubber stamp. Editors who aren't afraid to take the star quarterback aside and give him the old UR DOIN IT RONG speech.

And maybe, just maybe, if we get that change, and the overall story quality rises, and superstar artists are penalized for not sticking to the damned monthly schedule after having months, if not years, of lead time... maybe then we'll get new readers. Because from where I'm sitting, I really can't think of a reason people would set aside perfectly legitimate avenues of entertainment - more importantly, story vehicles that can actually deliver more often than not - to hunt down these deeply flawed and overpriced 22-page comic books. I love comics, but I've got a foot out the door as it is because it's been... what, five years now? Six? Since Marvel stopped being even slightly experimental and just slid into a quagmire of continuity revisions, each more convoluted than the last? That's a long, long time to go without ever once feeling that things were looking up. And if I could get tired of things as they are, I reckon others will get tired too. Maybe even the hardcore zombies - who surely account for at least 80% of Marvel's overall profit off comics, because those idiots will buy anything - will get to move on with their lives.

Then again, maybe not. Who knows? All I'm sure of is that, if we ever do get there, it won't be because John Byrne Saved Comics. Or because Tom Brevoort Did It Right. It'll happen despite their presence.

Game Review: Dreamweb

2008-12-09T23:06:00.001-08:00

Another DOS-era adventure game, but a bloody weird one where your interpretation of the plot basically depends on whether or not you read the manual addendum written as the diary of the main character.

The protagonist of "Dreamweb", Ryan, has been having constant nightmares about the impending destruction of the world; it seems that seven men and women - working individually - are seizing control of the seven nodes of the Dreamweb, the sum of humanity's hopes, aspirations and dreams. If they're successful, the whole world will descend into madness and evil. Ryan is contacted by the Keeper of the Dreamweb, and is told he must find and kill these seven before they complete their corruption of the nodes.

And that's more or less how the story goes: you move about a dirty city where it's constantly raining, hunting down one target after another and reclaiming the dream energy they leave behind when they die, returning it to the Dreamweb. There are a few twists along the way, but I don't want to spoil them. Or the ending, for that matter, which is... kind of an anticlimax on the one hand, but on the other hand it still makes sense in the context of the story.

So you have the whole Chosen One angle and it all seems pretty traditional. Now, in my specific case, I beat the game and then read Ryan's diary... and it added a huge amount of ambiguity to what I just played, because the story takes on a completely different context if you believe the diary.

So far all I've talked about is the story, mainly because there's not much to say about the game's visual dimension: it's a top-down perspective, and not a particularly good one - there's a smaller, separate window which provides a sort of "zoom" on objects you're pointing at. All dialogues are pre-programmed and your seven targets are put in a set order, so it's all quite linear. And yet, I think this is one of those cases where the interest in the story outweighs the predictability and mild clumsiness of the mechanical aspect. Worth a play-through for the story and the music alone.

Game Review: Gabriel Knight

2008-12-09T03:49:00.000-08:00

In keeping with my re-exploration of old-school adventure games, I recently completed one of the few Sierra game series I never had a chance to play in their heyday: the "Gabriel Knight" trilogy, comprised of "Sins of the Fathers" (1993), "The Beast Within" (1995) and "Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned" (1999).

There are a few factors which set "Gabriel Knight" apart from its contemporaries, even within Sierra's own product lines. First of all, it's the only series in which all the games had voice-acting (apart from "Phantasmagoria", though that doesn't really qualify seeing as how they were two completely unrelated games that happened to have the same title). Granted, "Sins of the Fathers" came out relatively late in the company's life - in fact, "Blood of the Sacred" was the very last traditional adventure game Sierra ever released - but even in 1993 you had games like "Space Quest V" that never got vocal treatment.

And the cast for "Sins of the Fathers" is pretty impressive: Tim Curry as Gabriel, Leah Remini as his assistant Grace Nakimura, Mark Hamill as Police Detective Franklin Mosely, and Michael Dorn as creepy voodoo expert Dr. John. Everyone involved delivers a great performance, with the possible exception of Curry's ultra-cheesy attempt at a New Orleans accent that actually got more outrageous in the third game. But we'll get to that in a bit. You also had a hilariously sardonic Cajun narrator mocking Gabriel every chance she got.

Another odd thing about the "Gabriel Knight" series is that popular opinion positions the first game, "Sins of the Fathers", as the best of the three. To be honest, while I think "The Beast Within" has its charms, I'm inclined to agree - it's the most "traditional" game in the trilogy in terms of gameplay, graphics and the interface, something that fits in quite easily with other Sierra masterpieces like "Quest for Glory IV" and "King's Quest VI". It has a strong, broad mystery that takes you from Louisiana to Africa to Germany and back, and it takes a very clear-minded (and surprisingly non-Hollywood-pop-culture-educated) view on Voudoun as religion vs. Voodoo as black magic. Also, "Sins of the Fathers" depicts Gabriel and Grace at their best: they bicker, they banter, they come pretty close to admitting mutual attraction, but neither of them are particularly interested in acting on it. At least, not yet.

None of this detracts from the fact that the second game, "The Beast Within", is appealing in its own way. The format shifts to interactive movie, so obviously it's a lot more streamlined and offers the player less possibilities in terms of plot-branching. But Jane Jensen again earns points for doing the research, taking the historical tale of Ludwig II, last king of Bavaria, and throwing werewolves into the mix, and players get to alternate between Gabriel and Grace, each tackling the same case from very different angles (Grace's storyline involves a lot of historical research, while Gabriel goes undercover and confronts the danger head-on). And if Dean Erickson takes the "pretty-boy" angle a little too far, flipping his hair every time he sits down like a slimmer Fabio, he still fits the mold nicely. Joanne Takahashi, on the other hand... let's just say Grace becomes seriously unlikeable in her first few scenes, generally played as an attention-starved stalker obsessed with Gabriel and biting the head off anyone who gets in her way.

Kudos are due for Jensen's use of homoeroticism - I'm not even talking about the explicit stuff like "Louie" being Ludwig's lover, but von Glower caressing a half-naked Gabriel as he sleeps? von Zell getting all bitchy because his ex-boyfriend has a new (and prettier) toy? Wow. Not the sort of thing I would've expected to find in a 1995 video game.

Which brings us to "Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned". And... it just doesn't live up to its predecessors. I mean, it's admirable that they try something new every game, and here we have a fully 3D environment in which the camera can move completely independent of the player character - refreshing at first, but you'll get tired of it very quickly when it comes to navigating and/or finding a specific item or person in a huge sprawling area. Fortunately, the camera moves swiftly, but still, it's an annoyance.

Tim Curry is back as Gabriel, and like I said, he's even more over-the-top here... So Bad It's Good? I honestly can't say. Anyway, after facing a voodoo cult and werewolves, Gabriel and Grace are up against vampires this time around. Sounds exciting? It would've been, if the game were actually about vampires. But that whole storyline gets sidetracked for most of the game so Gabriel can investigate - I kid you not - the Holy Grail. And it turns into a ridiculously muddled mess, with a bunch of scavenger hunters digging for treasure, some mumblings about alchemy, the 11th-hour appearance of the Wandering Jew and an origin story for the Ritter line that is so corny, so ludicrously and blatantly Christian-By-Numbers, that my eyes almost rolled right out of their sockets.

And if Grace and Gabriel didn't come off too well in "The Beast Within", they - and good old Mosely from New Orleans - are even worse here: Gabriel calls Grace a walking chastity belt while she's within hearing distance, and then he has a bad dream about a vampire attacking her and bamp-chicka-wow-wow, Something We Know Not What ensues. And the ending... abrupt, unsatisfactory, supposedly grows out of earlier events but I'm hard-pressed to see the connection. The whole Gabriel/Grace dynamic is just screwed to hell with this game, and that was a big part of the fun in the first game (and, to a lesser extent, the third as well). It doesn't help that "Blood of the Sacred" has some of the most obscure puzzles in the trilogy, especially towards the end with the whole "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" bit.

So, yeah, lousy ending to a great pair of games, for what that's worth. I'd say stick with the first two and give the third a pass - any closure you think you'll get from "Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned" will be disappointing to say the least.

Oy vey.

2008-12-06T02:51:00.000-08:00

Oh, "Heroes". What am I going to do with you?

SPOILER ALERT, obviously.

1. So the ultimate outcome of the Big World-Changing Eclipse is... Elle dies? Mind you, she was getting ridiculously wishy-washy and I approve of hitting the reset button for Sylar, if only because it's marginally better than continuing the cockamamie redemption story... but on a show with so many problems, it's odd they prioritized getting rid of a genuinely talented actress whose character debut was one of the few highlights of season 2.

1a. And seriously, that's it? Mass power loss, everyone's vulnerable, everyone's expendable, and then the eclipse ends and we're exactly where we left off? This has driven home - with painful finality - a fairly horrible realization I've had about this show: it's not about the characters anymore, it's about the powers. It's not about taking risks, because the list of characters who could have died during the eclipse is huge, and most of those characters still have some S1 goodwill attached to them that their deaths would have meant something: Peter, Nathan, Claire, even Sylar. This was the best point to change something, and they didn't. Missed opportunity.

2. As I said, I'm happy about the Sylar reboot, despite feeling rather queasy at the whole Tilt-a-Whirl routine his character's gone through this season - seriously, in 12 episodes he got his powers back, was captured by the Company, became the Third Petrelli Brother (or is he?), teamed up with Bennet, sold out Bennet to kill Jesse, saved Angela, betrayed Angela, betrayed Peter, saved Peter, switched to Pinehearst, retroactively got a "hunger" added to his character makeup to make his redemption easier (in theory) to follow, retroactively got a love interest in Elle, became an empath, lost his powers and now he's gone back to his roots as the boogeyman serial killer (yeah, I vaguely remember a time when Sylar was genuinely scary). And I know I've been driving this comparison home ad nauseum, but it's really the foremost parallel that comes to mind: Spike, hanging around Sunnydale long after he doesn't have a purpose anymore, so he's evil and then he gets a chip and becomes Xander's pet and then he falls in love with Buffy and then he gets a soul, all these "grafts" that don't feel organic in the least because they're dictated not by the logical extension of the character arc but because the plot requires some kind of justification for keeping these popular characters around.

3. I like Breckin Meyer. I like Seth Green. Ever since it was announced that they'd be doing a stint on "Heroes", I was looking forward to it. My reaction to their role?

If I had any faith left in Tim Kring at this point, I might be charitable enough to attribute the total waste of brilliant guest-stars as some kind of quasi-meta commentary on how celebrities draw attention regardless of how substantial (or insubstantial) their actual screen time may be, much like Nichelle Nichols last season. Then again, Nana Dawson really didn't do anything and the sole point of Sam and Frack is to give Hiro the Uncle Ben speech, and so who are we kidding here?

4. It's a point of concern that there's been a substantial death tally so far (Adam, Maury, Elle, Niki [in that her death was made "official" this season], Bob, Usutu, etc.) and yet I honestly can't think of a single death that moved me like Eden's or Isaac's or even Simone's for all the eye-rolling that followed. All the S3 casualties were pretty much written off quickly, almost as an afterthought, and you know, it might have actually meant something if Claire had died during the eclipse, because Bennet would have been devastated to have missed the last minutes of his daughter's life while he was busy avenging her, and... okay, it wouldn't have been a heroic death, at least not in the sense that she accomplished much besides sacrificing herself for her father, but it would mean something to other characters. Similarly, Peter - a character I really enjoyed in earlier years who I now find insufferable - could have gone out in a blaze of glory in Haiti, finally being a hero without having any powers at all. It's not like Peter's the focalizer for the audience anymore, those days are long behind us.

CONCLUSION: If I was ambivalent about it before, I'm not anymore. I'll stick around to the end of the season for closure's sake, but... yeah, the shark's definitely been jumped here, folks. Time to cut and run.

That's it?

2008-11-26T11:05:00.000-08:00

So these are the diabolical fiends that got Chelsea Handler all worked up?

Hmm.

They seem harmless enough...

Damn.

2008-11-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

Another one bites the dust. And, just to add insult to injury, "Pushing Daisies" is ending on a cliffhanger - one of my biggest pet peeves.

I'm feeling particularly frustrated about this one. It's like there's less and less space for intelligent programming these days; and when you do get fresh, exciting ideas, they're either dumbed down for mass consumption ("Heroes", which really should have stuck to the original plan of dumping the S1 cast and starting over fresh; "Veronica Mars" with its WB-infected teen melodrama of the later seasons) or painfully short-lived ("The Middleman", "Jake 2.0", "Freaks and Geeks", "Joan of Arcadia", the list sadly goes on.)

And the question then becomes: is it worth getting invested in these series to begin with? I mean, why should I bother to get into "Dollhouse" if it's not likely to last a full season? Why risk getting aggravated when the axe drops?

Game Review: Fahrenheit

2008-11-19T12:18:00.000-08:00

Before I start, I should note that I played the uncensored European version of this game, "Fahrenheit", but American players might recognize it as "Indigo Prophecy".

A friend of mine noticed that I occasionally blog about DOS-era adventure games, like the Sierra Quest line. That was my favorite genre growing up - which isn't to say I passed up the occasional "Wing Commander" or "System Shock", and I'll even admit to playing a few rounds of "Doom" before realizing that I'm absolutely hopeless at first-person shooters. But adventure games made up about 90% of my hard drive back then.

Anyway, said friend noted that my lament for the adventure genre might be premature, given that - while they're much less prominent these days than they were ten or fifteen years ago - adventure games are still being produced today. As a somewhat-contemporary example, he suggested I should try "Fahrenheit".

The tutorial gives you a pretty good idea of how the creators of this game saw their product: while you're learning how to control your character, designer David Cage appears in the (digital) flesh and talks about how he and his team want the player to view "Fahrenheit" as an interactive film. Which actually reminded me of "Phantasmagoria", in the sense that you spend more time watching the story unfold than you do actively determining its course. To be honest, I don't mind that particular mode of gaming: there's something to be said for sitting back and enjoying a good story.

But the game interface is a lot more complicated than just clicking on objects; for example, you have to drag your mouse in specific patterns during dialogue as a way of selecting which topic of conversation to pursue; if you don't move fast, the timer runs out and the conversation swerves away unpredictably. There are also numerous action sequences reminiscient of Simon Says, where the player must repeat a string of keys as they appear on the screen; failure will result in the loss of a "life", at the end of which it's game over. It's an unorthodox addition to an adventure game, and in the case of "Fahrenheit" it's both a great strength and a great weakness. The action sequences add a lot of adrenaline and reflexive play to a typically sedate genre, but they're also incredibly distracting, in the sense that they tend to kick off at crucial moments in the story, only you're too busy focusing on which keys to press. Entire scenes can pass you by while you're struggling to survive.

Another interesting - though inherently problematic - element of "Fahrenheit" is the Sanity Meter. As you progress through the game, your protagonists have all sorts of optional activities they can do, ranging from watching TV to listening to music to having sex. Some actions - the sort that you'd find calming and reassuring - grant you Sanity Points. Actions that could discourage or even damage your character's psyche (losing a bet, finding a dead body) subtract Sanity Points. If the Sanity Meter hits zero for any of your characters, at any point during the game, you lose. Sounds complicated? It is. Because "Fahrenheit" - despite its wide array of choices - is still a scripted game, and certain events will happen whether you set them up or not. So you may find yourself losing points without being able to do anything about it (for example, Carla's tarot reading which goes completely south, costing you a whopping 30 points). No way out of it, no way around it. And if you don't stock up on points beforehand, you may find yourself in a losing scenario through no fault of your own.

The story of "Fahrenheit" holds together rather nicely for most of the game: you start off with Lucas Kane, a man who wakes up in a restaurant bathroom, having just murdered a man while in a trance. Lucas is sure someone else was controlling his actions, but he has no way of proving his innocence - your first task is to help him conceal evidence and escape into the night.

And once Lucas is away, control shifts to Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles, a pair of detectives investigating the very same murder Lucas committed. It's fun to unravel your own crime scene, and in fact, some of the best moments in "Fahrenheit" involve the constant shifting between Lucas on the run and Carla and Tyler hot on his trail. Of course, Lucas also has to piece together what really happened that night.

It's an imaginative storyline. Unfortunately, it takes a right-angle turn towards the end of the game, after the amusement park sequence with Tiffany. I'm not going to spoil the twist, because it's a genuine yeahbuhwhat? moment, but let's just say you have a very sudden clash between the supernatural and science-fiction, and these things don't co-exist easily when they're set up well in advance; cramming them into the last hour or two of gameplay just feels like either someone lost a bet or the last act of the plot was cobbled together from different scripts. There are multiple endings, but not one of them really delivers an appropriate payoff.

Still, poor endgame aside, I honestly enjoyed "Fahrenheit". It's a different kind of adventure game, and aside from my issues with the action sequences (somewhat ameliorated by the fact that when you complete the game most - but not all - of the sequences are available for play-through or viewing) I thought the game mechanisms and interface were refreshingly innovative. I doubt I'll play the announced sequel - seriously, the endgame is just that bad - but it was fun while it lasted.

X-Maestro My Ass

2008-11-17T12:36:00.000-08:00

Hmph.

NEW EXILES #18
Written by CHRIS CLAREMONT
Pencils & Cover by TIM SEELEY
FINAL ISSUE!
They WERE the New Exiles…but after last issue’s shocking ending and a loss that will tear them apart, how can our heroes possibly continue? The answers await you here, true believers, along with clues as to what the future holds for our favorite dimension jumpers! Join X-Maestro Chris Claremont for a bittersweet chapter we can only call “BEGIN ANEW”!

This is one of those occasions where saying "I told you so" just doesn't carry any satisfaction with it. So Claremont tanked the book just like I knew he would - I'm still minus one monthly read. I guess I'd hoped they'd just replace him rather than axe the series altogether, but... well, short of a complete reboot (and honestly, we've had enough of those), I can't see anyone cleaning up his mess in an orderly fashion. It'd be bloody Xorn Damage Control all over again.

I'm just waiting for the inevitable Claremont interview where he whines about how he wasn't given enough time to really tell the story he wanted to tell...

Loeb-otomy?

2008-11-12T10:39:00.000-08:00

So... is it me, or was this week's episode of "Heroes" significantly better than anything else the season has offered so far? Sure, I'm still not happy with Sylar (and Elle to a lesser extent) being Spiked, but every other character was in top form - I'd almost forgotten that Nathan and Peter had such amazing chemistry together.

Obviously, it's way too early to attribute this apparent rise in quality to the departure of Jeph Loeb, but it's nice to think that maybe the slump is finally over...

TV Roundup

2008-11-04T22:15:00.000-08:00

Just some quick updates apropos of nothing:

Legend of the Seeker: See below.

Heroes: Slightly better than season 2, but that's not saying a lot. Fortunately, they've ditched Jeph Loeb and his Cloud of Stupidity, so maybe things'll turn around.

Dexter: The lack of a direct threat to Dexter (so far) has made this season a touch more sedate, but the characters have always been compelling enough to keep me watchng even when things weren't happening. And I'm comfortable with the possibility of Dexter's redemption in a way I could never feel about Sylar.

Sanctuary: Dropped. It just... didn't amount to anything especially entertaining for me.

Wolverine and the X-Men: Surprisingly short on character moments, but still solid for the most part.

Pushing Daisies: I love this show. So naturally it's got an axe hovering over its neck. Is there some kind of public objection to funny, intelligent television series these days that I don't know about?

Burn Notice: On mid-season hiatus.

Battlestar Galactica: Ditto.

Weeds: Finished its fourth season a while back; still a major favorite of mine.

The Middleman: I have no idea if this is coming back for a second season or not... but I hope it does. It was awesome.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The second season really kicked things up a notch, with particularly interesting performances from Summer Glau and Shirley Manson. Here's hoping it dodges the bullet.

Supernatural: I'm still not sold on the God Warrior angle, but other than that it's business as usual.

Damages: Still waiting for the second season of this brilliant legal drama, whcih made such use of misleading flashbacks and flash-forwards that would put every other show on this list to shame.

No Heroics: Fun for six episodes, but I doubt it would work in a longer format - the jokes aren't that funny, but they're okay for a quick run.

Ashes to Ashes: Nope.

True Blood: Hell no.

Flawless Victory

2008-11-04T20:46:00.001-08:00

Well done, America! It's about time you picked the right man for the job again!

First Impressions: Legend of the Seeker

2008-11-04T13:08:00.000-08:00

Hmm.

Okay, so Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert - creators of "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" and the infinitely superior "Xena: Warrior Princess" - have returned to television with a new series, an adaptation of Terry Goodkind's fantasy novel series "The Sword of Truth" (which I've never read). I saw the 90-minute pilot earlier today, and it left me with some mixed feelings.

Let's start with the superb visuals: this series looks stunning. Leading man Craig Horner is gorgeous (I like to think that bit of casting is Raimi's way of apologizing for seven years of shirtless Kevin Sorbo, which the years - and Paul Telfer's gratuitous skin shots in the later miniseries - have mercifully obliterated from my memory), and Bridget Regan's ethereal appearance goes a long way in selling those moments when she uses bad juju on people. As for Craig Parker, hell, I always thought Haldir was evil anyway. The action sequences have a tendency to overuse slow-motion, but they're still well-coordinated, without any of the blatantly impossible feats that eventually became mainstays of both "Xena" and "Hercules".

And yet... and yet. Mind you, I'm basing this opinion on the 90-minute pilot (which you probably guessed from the whole First Impressions thing), but as fantasy fare goes, "Legend of the Seeker" is rather formulaic. You've got your evil warlord, and a prophecy saying he'll be overthrown by a champion - said champion turns out to be a simple, down-to-earth guy with modest ambitions. Bad stuff happens, he accepts his destiny from a wizard with a ludicrous name (in this case, Zeddicus Zul Zorander), and everyone - seriously, everyone - constantly reaffirms his identity as the Chosen One until he finally "gets it" and follows through with an obligatory butt-kicking action scene. TV Tropes is going to have a field day categorizing this one.

And therein lies the problem: I've seen this exact sequence play itself out at least a dozen times in fiction. Raimi and Tapert haven't brought anything new to the table, there's no twist, no innovation that makes the stale old conventions at least seem fresh. Now, being formulaic isn't the same as being bad; after all, tropes become cliches partly because they work. But on the other hand, I don't know how happy Raimi would be to learn that I successfully predicted every single development in the episode - George's death, Richard being the Seeker, Zed's instant recovery from near-death, the hint of romance between Richard and Kahlen... hell, I'd bet good money that the evil warlord is Richard's father, just because the Darth Vader scenario is about the only cliche this show didn't tap in its debut.

Ultimately, it's hard for me to imagine staying invested in a series that's utterly incapable of surprising me - the eye-candy's nice, but I didn't chain myself to the TARDIS for David Tennant, and "Lost" is still teeming with cuties, so clearly The Pretty isn't enough. I'll stick around for a few more episodes, get a firmer sense of where this show is going... but my expectations have dropped a few hundred notches.

TV Review: Ashes to Ashes

2008-10-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

Is it fair to judge a sequel by the standards of its predecessor?

We do it all the time: any review of a movie with a 2 or a 3 (or a Returns) will have at least one reference to the original. Comics discourse will compare Chris Claremont's current rut to his legendary first run on "Uncanny X-Men", or Brubaker's "Daredevil" versus Bendis' "Daredevil" versus Miller's "Daredevil", and so on. We treat sequels as an extension of the previous narrative, and we naturally expect the follow-up to hold to the same quality as what came before.

But this is a problematic approach, because it overlooks the fact that changes occur outside the diegetic level of the story. Television spin-offs can have different actors, different writers, different directors, and the end result can either surpass the original ("Torchwood" if only for the total and complete absence of Daleks) or fall far beneath ("X-Men 3: The Last Stand"). Sometimes the premise can be set on a completely different path from the original series: "Angel" tried to do a lot of things, especially towards the end, but the one thing it never consciously attempted was imitating "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in terms of plot structure and characterization (ie: seasonal Big Bad vs. Wolfram and Hart as the constant nemesis).

So with that in mind, let's have a look at "Ashes to Ashes", a spin-off of "Life on Mars".

I've always had a love-hate relationship with TV from my native country: for every "Ultraviolet" you get a clunker like "Hex", and to this day I have yet to see the appeal of "Doctor Who" (sorry, kazekage! Still not sold!).

But I loved "Life on Mars". Oh, it took me a few episodes to really get into it; John Simm is an acquired taste, and DCI Gene Hunt is so very 1973 that I couldn't help frowning every time he harrassed Annie. But Philip Glenister plays the role with so much heart that you can't bring yourself to hate him.

The thing that set "Life on Mars" apart - the thing that, in a broader sense, sets most UK television apart from its American counterpart - is that things are rarely spelled out. Like "Ultraviolet", "Life on Mars" leaves blanks for the viewers to fill in themselves: like the intro says, Sam gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. Is he mad? In a coma? Has he traveled into the past? But the questions run deeper than that, because at times it seems Sam is inadvertantly setting up events that come to pass in the future: he sends Tony Crane to a mental hospital, and thirty years later Tony escapes and torments the comatose Sam. He takes down kingpin Stephen Warren and his own father assumes control of various criminal operations. So is he really following some kind of destiny or is his mind just creating situations to deal with any scenario that arises? And who is the Test Card Girl? We don't know for sure; we're not meant to know for sure. That's why I think the American adaptation is going to fail - even in the pilot, too much effort was made to force-feed the audience, leaving no ambiguity unresolved (Sam considers shooting a younger Colin to save Maya).

Anyway, "Life on Mars" ended with a proper finale that was both tragic and oddly comforting. And then we got "Ashes to Ashes": DI Alex Drake, a psychologist who studied Sam's "delusions", is abducted and shot in the head. She wakes up in 1981 and finds Gene Hunt and his team waiting for her... minus Sam, of course.

The twist, of course, is that Alex believes she's assimilated Sam's fantasy and expects this world to work for her the way it worked for Sam. Only it doesn't: Sam got messages through the television and radio, Alex hears nothing. Sam infrequently saw the Test Card Girl, Alex is chased by a clown (little girl vs. clown, hard to say which one is creepier there). But Gene Hunt is the same... well, mostly.

See, it's that "well, mostly" that makes "Ashes to Ashes" so complicated. It's not really something you can detach from "Life on Mars", if only because Alex never shuts up about it's all in her head (and that right there is a loss of ambiguity, because Sam is never really sure what's going on whereas Alex is utterly convinced and never loses that conviction). On the other hand, if we compare the two, "Ashes to Ashes" is going to come out looking all the poorer.

There are several reasons for this. Number one, Keeley Hawes gives it the old college try, but ye Gods, there are bite marks on every piece of scenery from Manchester to London. She shrieks at the sky, she curses, she quite overtly talks about how everyone is a figment of her imagination - and, of course, for the plot to hold together, people just ignore her or act amused rather than call the men with the white coats.

Number two, the series seems less interested in Alex finding her way around 1981 than it is in shadowy government conspiracies, the near-constant presence of her mother, and a quasi-romantic-triangle.

Number three, there's no counterpart for the absent Annie Cartwright, who served as Sam's confidante. She was the only one Sam was completely honest with, the only person who knew he believed he was from the 21st century. Alex doesn't have that, ostensibly because she doesn't need it - after all, she's 100% positive that this is all a product of brain damage - but it also means she doesn't have someone in her corner.

Number four - and this is the big one - Alex has a daughter. She has a rock-solid motive to return to 2008, and nothing can change that. Therein lies the problem: she's not at all tempted by the world of 1981. One of the best ongoing themes in "Life on Mars" was the way Sam was gradually falling in love with 1973, especially given the little we see of his cold, lonely existence 30 years later. Alex doesn't have any similar dilemma; if she finds a way "out", she'll take it without a second thought. No tension at all.

Number five, this series puts Gene Hunt in a very different light. "Life on Mars" had him as the lawless anti-hero, the guy who bends laws for what he thinks is the greater good. Sometimes he's right, sometimes he's wrong. And Sam constantly struggled against that, the voice of morality to Hunt's amorality. But eight years later, when Alex Drake arrives, the police - and Gene specifically - fall so heavily under public scrutiny that Gene is quite visibly emasculated; he's dealing with lawyers, he's feeling past his prime, and it'd be an interesting turn for the character if Sam were still around, but Alex isn't inclined to care about his problems - not real, remember? - so, despite the fact that Glenister is still bringing his A Game to the picture, it doesn't work.

All things considered, "Ashes to Ashes" doesn't really live up to the excellence of "Life on Mars". And I think that, even if we were to detach the series from its progenitor (easy enough given that, after the pilot episode, Sam is never mentioned again, and Annie is never mentioned at all), it still wouldn't work: the plot is all over the place, Hawes constantly overacts, and it feels as though "Ashes to Ashes" provides too many answers - there's no uncertainty, no mystery, nothing to contradict Alex when she goes on and on about how her brain created the entire scenario and everyone in it. And that's such a big part of the appeal - not just for "Ashes to Ashes" but for British TV in general - that doing without it seems like a loss of some kind.

And with yesterday's episode...

2008-10-14T01:49:00.000-07:00

"Heroes" has finally, firmly crossed into WTF Territory. Here be dragons.

To be fair, they're still doing some things right. But as I watched yesterday's episode, I started thinking about storylines I care about this season vs. storylines I don't care about. And it's tilting pretty heavily in favor of the latter:

Hiro and Ando? So over the unfunny antics. It was nice the first time around, now it's just "meh".

Peter? Going dark-side is an interesting turn... or it would be, if we didn't have Claire and Mohinder doing the same while Sylar, of all people, gets a redemption subplot (uncomfortable S6 Spike flashbacks ahoy!).

Matt? There's no end to the tedium there.

Nathan and Tracy? If I hear "God" one more time... sure, it's nice that the latest twist subverted the whole Touched By An Angel bit, but still. It wears thin.

Sylar? Like I said, the whole redemption thing is just not working. Wasn't set up properly, and it's being rushed, and I still don't get a sense of why Sylar wants to stop killing when it's never seemed to bother him before.

Claire? Again, having her take a darker turn is a risky but intriguing development precisely because she's always been the "heart" of the series - and it would be great, if her storyline wasn't getting lost in the shuffle of so many characters switching sides.

Mohinder and Maya? Ugh.

What all this goes to show is that I'm either lukewarm or downright bored with pretty much every storyline that's running now. Where "Heroes" has been excelling is in specific moments and scenes, such as yesterday's last-minute reveal (which makes sense, for a change). It's enough, I suppose, though I'm doubting I'll be on board for season 4 if things don't turn around. There's still ample time, but it feels like Tim Kring's got an entirely wrong-headed approach to the situation: trying to recapture the fun of the first season is all well and good, but replicating the first season isn't the way to go. And bowing further to actors'/characters' popularity even when they've served their in-story purpose (ie: Sylar) isn't doing anyone any favors. Don't get me wrong, I adored S1 Sylar and Zachary Quinto is hotter than the Merciless Peppers of Quetzlzacatenango, but his character arc is textbook dead-ended.

Hard to say whether "Heroes" has actually jumped the shark yet; the third season is off to a horribly awkward start, but there's still time to turn things around. One thing's for sure, though: This Is Not My Beautiful Show.

(Same as it ever was?)