Battle! Destruction! Blades and arrows and death and mind control!
Kay: Deadliest Warrior: “Apache vs. Gladiator” – Katherine saw an episode of this somewhere, and wanted to watch one. And … well, actually, hey, it’s kind of fun in a “D&D Porn” kind of way. Meaning they take two opposing individuals / armies / archetypes and try to figure out who would win, with lots of shallow research into weapons, lots of demos on human body simulators, and some magical computer program that evaluates the bouts.
In this case it was Apaches (guerilla stealth fighters, using bows, tomahawks, war clubs, knives) vs. Roman Gladiators (using the cestus, the trident and net, the sling, and the sica). Which is a bizarro match because, once all the analysis is done, it’s completely dependent on the situation (put both in a gladiatorial ring, the Gladiator wins; put both in the countryside, the Apache wins).
Ultimately the Apache won, but the hour-long episode took us at least 50% longer because Kay and I would pause it and argue about the points being presented. Which means it was rollicking good fun for both of us.
And, I informed her, she was hoist on her own petard, because that was the perfect segue into …
Dave: The Hunger Games – I watched this on the flight home from India. Kay’s been reluctant to join up with 95% of her age cohort in reading this (almost directly resisting the impulse to go along, which I salute), but I thought she would actually enjoy the movie, which has most of the action from the book but about 1/3 of the Emo Drama Llama stuff.
And, in fact, she reacted as expected — enjoying the world-building of the first half more than the gladiatorial combat of the second half, but calling out vocally all the obvious dramatic plot twists and manipulations.
It’s actually a fun movie to watch with someone else, to be honest.
I have no idea if she’ll read the book (the first is the best), but she wanted something to cleanse the palate after that, so we watched …
Dave (kinda): Avengers – Earth’s Mightiest Heroes: “Emperor Stark” – We really have loved this series, pulling together a loving melange of Avengers history over the decades into a modern cartoon. This one was non-canon, but featured the Purple Man, everyone’s favorite most-loathesome villain (voiced perfectly by Brent Spiner, to tie it into last night’s TNG episode).
As good as Spiner was as Zebediah Kilgrave (best. villain. name. ever.), Brian Bloom as an awful, over-the-top Captain America.
Margie’s off to Oracle World (or whatever they’re calling it these days), so Kay and I got to watch TV until our eyes bled.
Well, we actually normally watch a fair amount of TV as it is, but Margie being out lets us indulge (and impose upon one another) things we might not throw up on the screen normally. Usually that’s movies, but, for some reason, yesterday was all about TV shows … I took the first shot:
Mad scientist creates perfect, conscienceless war machine to carry out his race's dreams of conquest and glory. On videotape. What could possibly go wrong?
Dave: Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks: We’d actually watched the first two segments of this 6-part serial (1975) several months back, before Kay decided that OldWho was unutterably cheesy and would have nothing more to do with it. Faced with being cut off from her watch of the current series while Margie was away, though, she relented, and as I wanted to get her to this first appearance of Davros before he pops up at the end of the Fourth Series of NewWho, it was all win-win.
To start out with, yes, Kay was right, it is unutterably cheesy. BBC always produced Doctor Who on a shoestring, and this episode demonstrates that over and over again. Writing-wise, the half-hour multi-part format makes for cliffhangers and convenient rescues that would put the Saturday Afternoon Movie Serial to shame.
That said, Tom Baker is his usual excellent as the Fourth Doctor, veering between huge grins, tragic grief, and monstrous indecision about whether to commit genocide against the nascent Dalek race. Liz Sladen’s Sarah Jane does a lot of screaming and squealing, but also demonstrates initiative and independence (Kay couldn’t get over her wearing a yellow rain slicker for much for the first half of the serial). Ian Marter’s Harry is stolid, plucky, and everything the third banana Companion is supposed to be.
Worth a rewatch for the morality plays, mass (bloodless) killings of extras and billed players, and, of course, to see the origin of the Daleks.
Kay seemed to enjoy it — and actually found herself liking the Fourth Doctor and his scarf, despite herself.
"Doctor Who" for the younger set, but still lots of fun for all that.
Kay: Sarah Jane Adventures, Series 1: We watched the first season and change of this back when it was first out on DVD, but now that Kay has actually watched Doctor Who, she wanted to go back to it.
We rewatched the pilot special (“Invasion of the Bane“), as well as the two-part “Revenge of the Slitheen“. They’re both good fun, even if a bit young-folk-skewed in plot and story sophistication. Sladen’s wistful but resolute Sarah Jane is a fine character, as she finds herself drawn back both to Investigating the Weird and, even more uncomfortably, becoming a surrogate parent to her Scooby Gang.
There are some witty fan service bits in the first few eps, with the sonic lipstick applicator, a cameo by K-9, and an expository deus ex machina in the form of “Mr. Smith.” The FX are competent, if hardly cutting edge, but they do the job.
Young folks could do far worse than watching this series, especially as a gateway drug to Doctor Who.
Well ... um ... at least we got "Q" out of this episode
Dave: Star Trek: The Next Generation: “Encounter at Farpoint“: For some reason I happened upon this on Amazon and noted it was free to view for Prime subscribers. So I threw it up there to see how it was (after not having watched it for a decade or more).
The results were mixed. My recollections of the first season of TNG being slow-paced, stolid, full of wonder about the universe and being happy and peaceful galactic campers were, apparently, correct. If not for “Star Trek” on the label (in a period — 1987! — when there was a huge desire for same), this show would have died a deserved death.
Which would have been a shame, because this two-part ep also does a hell of a job establishing the TNG cast and their nascent character drivers. Compassionate and controlled Picard, ambitious but sort of snotty Riker, over-emotive Troi, flamebrand Worf, somewhat less believable flamebrand Yar, professional and aloof Crusher, geeky fanboy Wesley, VISOR-wearing LaForge …
The directorial pacing on this premiere is horrifyingly slow (this same sort of story could be and was compressed down to a single ep in future TNG tales), and there’s so much desire to exposit, and to show off the new, fancy, glossy, whiz-bang Enterprise D that even the brightest shining moment of the episode — the introduction of John DeLancie’s “Q” — barely manages to hold interest.
For all of that, Kay confessed she liked it better than she had expected (this being her first real exposure to TNG), and better than The Original Series. So we’ll probably end up watching more over time. TNG did have some remarkably good episodes over the years; the trick is moving through/past all of the generic-to-crappy ones.
(Weird technical note: the Amazon PPV version of this episode was missing an audio track, which meant that some music cues, and several audio FX, including background sounds, were missing. Which gave everything a slightly surreal sensation, both as explicit events like guns firing and Q (dis)appearing were silent, and the background hum and whoosh of the Enterprise were completely gone, but the squeaking floors under the characters as they walked around were quite audible. Very odd.)
Big stack o’ stuff to watch for the rest of the week. Wonder what Kitten will choose for her next item?
Who I will remember primarily for Commodore Matt Decker, the Ahab-like doomed starship commander in the Star Trek (The Original Series) episode "The Doomsday Machine," and was the James Thurberesque character in the short-lived "My World and Welcome To It". Thanks for your entertaining us, sir.
Really hoping to get that post feed from Google Plus working again Real Soon Now.
Yeah, I’ll probably have to go see “Skyfall” – The new trailer for the new Bond film (which doesn’t appear to include the Queen, though it does include Dame Judy, which is even better).
Think about the poor, starving artists! – So who gets the money when record labels successfully sue pirates in order to protect poor, starving artists? (Hint: It’s not the poor, starving artists.)
Cool series of large pix of the space shuttle prototype flying around the NYC area. Check out the groovy pic from 1976 toward the end, as the Star Trek gang visited her.
And while most folks remember you for your "Star Trek" years, I'll never forget your two classic "Twilight Zone" episodes, either. #ddtb
Embedded Link
Happy Birthday, William Shatner – Boing Boing
Actor William Shatner celebrates his 81st birthday today. He is best known for his role in the Star Trek television series and films, but has had a long and wildly varied career that… continues to…..
I posited a few days ago the question of what we should watch with the Girl after we run out of “Star Trek” (TOS) episodes (which we slowed down on dramatically this week because it was standardized testing week for Kay and I wanted to reduce the stress in her life).
Lots of good suggestions were made, and I myself was leaning toward Farscape, when something happened …
My computer died.
Which led to a chain of Margie and Kay trying to console me in my profound irk, at which point I thought of something that would make the time pass by that I’ve been wanting to do for a while — watch (finally!) the most recent “Doctor Who” Christmas Special.
Roll the tape back a bit. I’m the biggest Doctor fan in the house, though Margie finds it fairly well tolerable. I tried hooking Kay onto it a couple of years (!) back with a single episode, but it didn’t stick.
So roll the tape forward again. I figured, beyond my wanting to watch it, that the Christmas Special should be stand-alone enough to not cause Kay difficulty with continuity (I was right).
And now I can’t recall whether it was Katherine or Margie who suggested that maybe we run through “Doctor Who” once we’re done with ST:TOS. But it was an epiphany. Must have been Margie, because Kitten chimed in that she thought that would be fine.
To test it out (since it was still a relatively early evening), I threw in the “The Next Doctor” Christmas episode, which all enjoyed very much.
So … once ST:TOS is done, I think we’ll be moving on to the (modern Russell Davies) “Doctor Who” eps, starting with my favorite Doctor, Chris Eccleston. Except … I loaned the 1st and 2nd series to … someone local. And I can’t remember … who.
Who-ever it was … can I get them back sometime soonish? #ddtb
So I'm trying to explain to my daughter why the "Star Trek" animated series was such an incredibly awesome thing to people who were starved for "Star Trek" (or any TV SF taken seriously) in a world before VCRs and DVDs and DVRs and cable and the like.
Having only seen one episode of it ("More Tribbles, More Troubles"), she just wasn't getting it.
Which made me come up with the analogy of a "Lord of the Rings" animated series, of all-new stories, half-hour in length, with really crude Filmation animation, and all the content restrictions of Saturday morning cartoons.
That got the picture across to her. And also gave her an incurable case of the giggles. "That means they couldn't do the drinking contest. Mwah-ha-ha-ha!"
Bingo. But she'd still watch it. Heck, so would I. #ddtb
Embedded Link
Star Trek: The Animated Series – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[edit] Production. The series was produced by Filmation in association with Paramount Television and ran for two seasons from 1973 to 1974 on NBC, airing a total of twenty-two half-hour episodes. An e…
I've been slowly moving through "Star Trek" (The Original Series) with my 11-year-old daughter (my wife in tow, rolling her eyes at the appropriate moments), in order to most properly inculcate her with geek cred … and, if nothing else, helping her recognize the source of so many of my day-to-day phrases and references.
But we're steadily moving through the third season, and I need to look to the future. What should I start forcingcoercingrequiring setting the stage for her to be watching next? Options that have been raised:
1. The "Star Trek" movies … at least through #4. [won't last long] 2. "Star Trek: The Next Generation" [a bit lengthy, and with plenty of duds] 3. "Babylon 5" 4. "Farscape" 5. The James Bond movies.
Other suggestions, or comments on the above? #ddtb
Embedded Link
Star Trek: The Original Series – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[edit] Creation and development. In 1964, Gene Roddenberry, a longtime fan of science fiction, drafted a proposal for a science-fiction television series that he called Star Trek. This was to be set o…
It's not unalloyed gold — it's hard to make every joke over 30-40 minutes a comedy gem — but there's (mostly) some damned funny Star Trek humor here. #ddtb
Kay: Deadliest Warrior: “Apache vs. Gladiator” – Katherine saw an episode of this somewhere, and wanted to watch one. And … well, actually, hey, it’s kind of fun in a “D&D Porn” kind of way. Meaning they take two opposing individuals / armies / archetypes and try to figure out who would win, with lots of shallow research into weapons, lots of demos on human body simulators, and some magical computer program that evaluates the bouts.
Dave: The Hunger Games – I watched this on the flight home from India. Kay’s been reluctant to join up with 95% of her age cohort in reading this (almost directly resisting the impulse to go along, which I salute), but I thought she would actually enjoy the movie, which has most of the action from the book but about 1/3 of the Emo Drama Llama stuff.
Dave (kinda): Avengers – Earth’s Mightiest Heroes: “Emperor Stark” – We really have loved this series, pulling together a loving melange of Avengers history over the decades into a modern cartoon. This one was non-canon, but featured the Purple Man, everyone’s favorite most-loathesome villain (voiced perfectly by Brent Spiner, to tie it into last night’s TNG episode).
