It's the Dark Side of the Living Sith...
"Red Harvest" was recently published, and after the success of "Death Troopers," Lucasfilm has decided to let Joe Schreiber try out zombies in the days of the Old Republic. They're different this time, more like the 80's "Return of the Living Dead" zombies, where cutting off the head just isn't good enough to keep a good zombie down... or from screaming at you, for that matter. I recall someone mentioning somewhere that they were wondering how the dead could use The Force, since it flows through living stuff. While there wasn't any evidence of these zombies using said power, perhaps becoming a zombie limits you to "Force Scream" as your only talent, which comes in handy if you get decapitated. The infection later shows abilities like John Carpenter's "The Thing," which means the planet this whole thing takes place on (appropriately, an arctic one) could produce a sequel. Anyway, it's a quick read, and even those Star Wars fans with just a passing association with the expanded universe can find something to enjoy. It's got some callbacks to the films, mostly the mentioning of planets or locations like Endor, Geonosis, and Mustafar. They lose points for daring to print the word "Midichlorians," at least four times, and then solidifying them as the equivalent of a Force-virus.
A few tropes of Star Wars (and sci-fi literature) were present:
- All Dark Lords are named something obviously negative. In this case, Darth Scabrous. One wonders if Darth Vader would have been named something like Darth Scabies or Darth Psoriasis if this scheme had been established before Episode IV.
- Sith Lords are still the primary source of mad science in the Star Wars galaxy. Given the failure rate seen in books, video games, etc. I can only assume any records were made by attending droids, who hoped that someday some other hated meatbag "master" would repeat the process.
- Non-sentient life forms being given names starting with their planet of origin. It's not that such names are "wrong," but when you have a greenhouse full of plants in addition to the usual "you're as [adjective] as a [planet name] [organism]" dialogue going off every so often, it gets to be noticeable (and get it's own entry at TVTropes.org). "Mustafar Lava Fleas" would make a great name for a rock band, by the way.
- The Sith are self-centered backstabbing self-defeating jerks. Being an overall evil group is one thing, but if it's always been as bad as in this novel, they must have formed an empire entirely by accident, since it would seem that one Sith would kill another just to get the last club cracker on a luncheon tray. Assuming, of course, that one of their science experiments wasn't already killing them both.
The story also begs the question of what happened to the original infective agent that our villain is duplicating, since (unless something was mentioned that I missed) it seems nigh-indestructible. Of course, the whole thing takes place over the span of a day or two, so the long-term survival rate of the Sithing Dead might not be terribly worrisome. Anyway, as the second zombie novel for Star Wars, I think they'd be pushing it to put out a third, even if it's a sequel to this one, outside of wanting to create a "Zombie Trilogy." I can buy that the Emipre/Sith would be interested in or capable of this stuff, since the Dark Side is, well, Dark, and the Force does extend life in some form or another a bit past the grave (in some cases). Were I to attempt an Emperor-like foretelling of the future, I'd hazard a guess that the next crop of zombies would show up on planet Kamino where something goes wrong with the cloning tanks (resulting in, of course, flesh-eating Jango Fetts) or as a biological means of disposing of the large number of clones left over after Episode III that goes horribly wrong. Begun, this Episode Z has.
"V" came back on ABC, starting the episode out with some face-melting CGI to start things off on the creepy side. More on "human emotion" as a theme as well as given credit for allowing an alien-human hybrid to happen via "love." But we got a little more of the V's plans and a look at their true form. The real reveal was at USA Today's site, where they showed what the new reptilian aliens look like in a clear side-view. I do give them an "A" for effort, but I can't help thinking "Teenage Mutant Ninja Ant-Dog."
Since I'm more often than not a cynic about movies, I see justification for said attitude in the short list announced for the Razzie Awards. They have a new category: Worst Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3-D. And again, the Razzies would be a must-see event for me if they let some certain Rifftrackers or Titanically Cinematic people do a few take-downs of the nominees as entertainment between categories.... :)
Again I've been absent from the web because I think my house is trying to kill me or get me to move out. A week or two ago, we had a tree clogging the sewer line (I do need to remember to re-stock our bleach supply), and today I spent most of my time entertaining Josh and trying not to make any noise while we were cooped up in my office with a space heater running. This was due to my furnace deciding to let its igniter crack. It wasn't a bad day overall; the temperatures were above freezing outside, and had things gotten truly unbearable, there were friends/relatives who would have let us stay warm while we waited for the Furnace Guy to show up. But it made me think: A true horror film would be one where a house is haunted by a poltergeist that caused property damage and ran up a bunch of bills, maybe even calling India long-distance or texting hundreds of people on the victim's cell phone while they slept. Hmm... I may need to work on that screenplay.
So while I decide if I'd like to see Jack Black or John Cusak in the title role, have some of these:
- It's a one-off gag, and I'm pretty sure the same joke was used in an opening to "The Critic," but I still chuckled.
- Just in case you didn't have a thing to wear and wanted a project, here's how to make an LED Tron 2.0 jacket. Identity disc sold separately.
- If you can read Japanese, you can play this retro-console version of 'Fallout 3'. I guess you can play even if you can't read Japanese, but we can't be held responsible for karma loss.
- This next flash game, Hyperpipe, might be harder than a Japanese 'Fallout 3.' Connect every pipe to the water supply on the board. Good luck!
- Not only does this guy have an awesome old house, it's been remodeled to accommodate his game collection, which is also quite awesome.
- Restoring the karmic imbalance incurred when a kitten, a cat is swarmed by cuteness and barely escapes with his dignity intact.
- Blasphemy against collectibles or a festive display? You decide when you see this Star Wars action figure wreath.
- Two comic book links: The first is Bleeding Cool's comic speculation results on which we see which comics they recommended as profitable buys paid off. The second is Comic Alliance's 5 worst comics of 2010. Nothing I worked on was in either list, so I guess that's a wash. :)
- It's too bad Firefly was canceled... or was it?
- So here's an interesting idea: fund the construction of a Black Monolith on the moon. I mean, if aliens won't do it...
- And speaking of aliens (or something similar), Robo Rampage is a fun little game whose playfield gets more and more cluttered with the remains of your opponents.