A Clone Wars Reference and Beyond
With "Battlestar Galactica" over, and "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" over, and "Doctor Who" in between series (and I managed to miss that program's latest special altogether), the thought that "needed" to watch something "live-action" and "fictional" on TV (other than old Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes) started to nag at me again. (However, in remembering that mood now I'm thinking that if I can park myself in front of a TV set for an hour or more, I should put even more effort into blocking out good lengths of time to read through books of all sorts...) Reading the preview pages of the newspaper, I decided to try a new series called "Flashforward," which begins with everyone on Earth blacking out for just over two minutes; beyond the assorted crashes that result from this, everyone has seen visions of what they'll be doing months in the future. By the end of the first episode, as the characters start trying to sort out what to do about the future, I was interested enough to keep watching.
In yesterday's episode, there was a small moment when a character (probably not a "major" one, at least at the moment) goes to the empty house of his wife to get some things for his son in the hospital. In the son's room, there's a "Clone Wars" bedspread, and that caught my attention in a pleased sort of way... although I happened to think beyond that reference, and started remembering.
It's quite possible that "Flashforward" hasn't impressed itself on my consciousness quite as much as the three shows I mentioned at the beginning did, and while I can wonder if all three of them succeeded that way by tapping into awarenesses I'd already had, I had heard of the science fiction novel (by Robert J. Sawyer) the series is based on. However, in the newsmagazine article that gave me that awareness a few years back, there was a little comment that, being set "a few years into the future" instead of "right now" the way the program is, there was a reference in the book to "George Lucas still working on Star Wars." Put that way, it's perfectly prescient. Unfortunately, with my general bruised and isolated defensiveness about Star Wars at that time, I could imagine the reference in the book being presented in a fine pitch of casual contempt, and I never got around to reading the book, just one more of a vast number of things I wound up steering clear of through the conviction that they would make contemptuous references to Star Wars and that would just depress me... (However, just today I read in the paper that the series is shaping up rather differently than the book did: in the book, people saw decades into the future, and the perspective was of scientists rather than FBI agents and hospital doctors, no doubt letting those who read it conclude the show is more "conventional...")
In yesterday's episode, there was a small moment when a character (probably not a "major" one, at least at the moment) goes to the empty house of his wife to get some things for his son in the hospital. In the son's room, there's a "Clone Wars" bedspread, and that caught my attention in a pleased sort of way... although I happened to think beyond that reference, and started remembering.
It's quite possible that "Flashforward" hasn't impressed itself on my consciousness quite as much as the three shows I mentioned at the beginning did, and while I can wonder if all three of them succeeded that way by tapping into awarenesses I'd already had, I had heard of the science fiction novel (by Robert J. Sawyer) the series is based on. However, in the newsmagazine article that gave me that awareness a few years back, there was a little comment that, being set "a few years into the future" instead of "right now" the way the program is, there was a reference in the book to "George Lucas still working on Star Wars." Put that way, it's perfectly prescient. Unfortunately, with my general bruised and isolated defensiveness about Star Wars at that time, I could imagine the reference in the book being presented in a fine pitch of casual contempt, and I never got around to reading the book, just one more of a vast number of things I wound up steering clear of through the conviction that they would make contemptuous references to Star Wars and that would just depress me... (However, just today I read in the paper that the series is shaping up rather differently than the book did: in the book, people saw decades into the future, and the perspective was of scientists rather than FBI agents and hospital doctors, no doubt letting those who read it conclude the show is more "conventional...")