TV bits and bobs
24 (Season 7): it was better than S6, in which the office romance subplot was beyond nonsensical. Also I liked Renee Walker as am constitutionally weak vis redheaded FBI agents, even if she got more and more anorexic-looking as the season drew on. :| She and Bauer had great working chemistry, and their relationship was only ambiguously romantic. (Poor Larry!) The entire season wrestled with the moral problem of torture, for which I grudgingly commend the writers (it took you until S7, guys? amid wide-ranging media criticism?), though they did nothing to address the fact that in most cases where it's resorted to in the show torture wouldn't have worked, because logically speaking all anyone would have to do to scupper Bauer's efforts is send him on a wild goose chase for two hours to the other side of town. Then again Bauer's Very Bad Day This Time begins with a kidnapped computer expert who builds a device capable of taking down aviation networks within FIFTEEN MINUTES of getting hauled out of his car by terrorists... yeah. Don't ask me why they didn't just start the story a week later.
Apparently I missed a TV movie in between where Jack Bauer goes to Africa. Must make a note to find that online, I keep forgetting. XD; Fleetingly considered watching S8 as it airs but I would probably find this show unwatchable if not in two-DVDs-a-day marathons.
Archiving from DW mid-December:
I need to find other people who have been blogging their Trek (re)watches. I mean, I personally know like five ppl who rewatched the whole TV series after the new movie came out, y'all are just lazy. XDD And the folks out there all seem to be obsessed with totting up the number of Significant Looks per episode between Kirk and Spock and concurrently sniping at babe o' the week, which is awesome and all, but there is so much other hilarity happening in this thing.
TOS S01E20 The Alternative Factor: for instance, my Significant Looks per episode at Spock's bum as he hunches over his space viewer thingy. I note in passing that they've improved the ergonomics of the bridge science station in the new movie, for definition of "improve" with which a million ZQ fangirls would beg to differ. Reboot Kirk doesn't know what he's missing, poor thing.
Other than aforementioned opening shot, this was a bona fide bad episode, the first thus far. You can sort of glimpse the germ of a cool idea that could have worked as a textual short story, but that becomes doubly incoherent when 1960s F/X limitations bump up against an event that's as intuitively representable in visual linear narrative terms as the square root of -1.
TOS S01E21 Tomorrow Is Yesterday: whereas this one is just like ROLLING 4EVR. Maybe because I'm a X-Files + Unsolved Mysteries fan of long standing; I mean, can you imagine if the Truth... Is Out There... is... *TREK THEME STARTS* *cut to shot of USS Enterprise wobbling its awkward-swan way across the blue Midwestern sky*
It's just, yeah. Too much pop culture baggage, forty years of alien abduction scenarios and Star Trek both, but for once it's working for rather than against the intended effect. Looking at the FACE of the second guy they accidentally beamed up was like insert yr own gag re: anal probes and Mr. Spock. But that would be twice this post wouldn't it.
The ensemble dialogue and doing-stuff was brilliant too, including the Spock-McCoy interaction. It's kind of a fine line for me, I find - my close friends' circle doesn't do that kind of hardcore teasing/sarcasm, and I wouldn't be able to suck it up personally if they did, so half the time I'm like OMG NOT FUNNY DD:. But it totally depends on the episode (i.e. whoever's writing it). And lots of Sulu! Oh yeah and when Kirk was jimmying that door in the airbase I was like "...Sonic screwdriver! No wait, wrong series," and then IT TURNED OUT TO BE A SONIC SCREWDRIVER, BAWLING.
That Doctor Who alleged TV movie from the 90s: don't worry, I know better than to go at this in reverse chronological order. XD; It's a discrete entity no longer than NuWho specials (tEoT is a bona fide feature-length), and sororial unit has this thing for Paul McGann. Script-wise it makes one feel quite churlish complaining about Russell T. Davies. Ppl gripe that the circumstances surrounding Ten's regeneration lacked dignity, imagine... XD; I would bounce this back to my MD flisters if it weren't so ridiculous but you know what, Martha did not think the Doctor was afflicted with ATRIAL FIBRILLATION. Or with a broken X-ray machine.
There were lulz to be had, don't get me wrong XD; and it kind of raised more continuity questions than it answered. Like... the TARDIS eats the Master? 6o_O;; Isn't that kind of awkward Do the Time Lords fish him out while the Doctor's on lunch break or something? Sororial unit says okay, surely all these vortices just lead into the same elsewhere, like falling into an underground lake. From the disparate effect I guess Rose was staring into a different glowy bit altogether.
Apparently I missed a TV movie in between where Jack Bauer goes to Africa. Must make a note to find that online, I keep forgetting. XD; Fleetingly considered watching S8 as it airs but I would probably find this show unwatchable if not in two-DVDs-a-day marathons.
Archiving from DW mid-December:
I need to find other people who have been blogging their Trek (re)watches. I mean, I personally know like five ppl who rewatched the whole TV series after the new movie came out, y'all are just lazy. XDD And the folks out there all seem to be obsessed with totting up the number of Significant Looks per episode between Kirk and Spock and concurrently sniping at babe o' the week, which is awesome and all, but there is so much other hilarity happening in this thing.
TOS S01E20 The Alternative Factor: for instance, my Significant Looks per episode at Spock's bum as he hunches over his space viewer thingy. I note in passing that they've improved the ergonomics of the bridge science station in the new movie, for definition of "improve" with which a million ZQ fangirls would beg to differ. Reboot Kirk doesn't know what he's missing, poor thing.
Other than aforementioned opening shot, this was a bona fide bad episode, the first thus far. You can sort of glimpse the germ of a cool idea that could have worked as a textual short story, but that becomes doubly incoherent when 1960s F/X limitations bump up against an event that's as intuitively representable in visual linear narrative terms as the square root of -1.
TOS S01E21 Tomorrow Is Yesterday: whereas this one is just like ROLLING 4EVR. Maybe because I'm a X-Files + Unsolved Mysteries fan of long standing; I mean, can you imagine if the Truth... Is Out There... is... *TREK THEME STARTS* *cut to shot of USS Enterprise wobbling its awkward-swan way across the blue Midwestern sky*
It's just, yeah. Too much pop culture baggage, forty years of alien abduction scenarios and Star Trek both, but for once it's working for rather than against the intended effect. Looking at the FACE of the second guy they accidentally beamed up was like insert yr own gag re: anal probes and Mr. Spock. But that would be twice this post wouldn't it.
The ensemble dialogue and doing-stuff was brilliant too, including the Spock-McCoy interaction. It's kind of a fine line for me, I find - my close friends' circle doesn't do that kind of hardcore teasing/sarcasm, and I wouldn't be able to suck it up personally if they did, so half the time I'm like OMG NOT FUNNY DD:. But it totally depends on the episode (i.e. whoever's writing it). And lots of Sulu! Oh yeah and when Kirk was jimmying that door in the airbase I was like "...Sonic screwdriver! No wait, wrong series," and then IT TURNED OUT TO BE A SONIC SCREWDRIVER, BAWLING.
That Doctor Who alleged TV movie from the 90s: don't worry, I know better than to go at this in reverse chronological order. XD; It's a discrete entity no longer than NuWho specials (tEoT is a bona fide feature-length), and sororial unit has this thing for Paul McGann. Script-wise it makes one feel quite churlish complaining about Russell T. Davies. Ppl gripe that the circumstances surrounding Ten's regeneration lacked dignity, imagine... XD; I would bounce this back to my MD flisters if it weren't so ridiculous but you know what, Martha did not think the Doctor was afflicted with ATRIAL FIBRILLATION. Or with a broken X-ray machine.
There were lulz to be had, don't get me wrong XD; and it kind of raised more continuity questions than it answered. Like... the TARDIS eats the Master? 6o_O;; Isn't that kind of awkward Do the Time Lords fish him out while the Doctor's on lunch break or something? Sororial unit says okay, surely all these vortices just lead into the same elsewhere, like falling into an underground lake. From the disparate effect I guess Rose was staring into a different glowy bit altogether.