Odds and ends of SF television over the weekend
I suppose I should start by jotting down some reflections from the previous weekend, which I neglected to write out last week.
I'd taped the movie "Alien Resurrection" off of AMC and decided to watch it a week ago Saturday, to see if it was any better than I remembered it or if I could detect more Joss Whedon in it, after being thoroughly saturated with Buffy, Angel, and Firefly re-runs. And this time around, I did seem to recognize a lot more of the plot and characters in "Alien Resurrection" in terms of Whedonesque characters and themes from other shows.
I was particularly struck by the many ways that Firefly was pre-figured in that earlier movie: the semi-piratical tramp freighter, with a crew of gifted and (with the exception of the Ron Perlman proto-Jayne character) mostly loyal misfits. Once you start looking for Firefly parallels, the list just gets longer and longer.
And I'm surprised that I never noticed before how much the android character played by Winona Ryder resembled Spike and/or Angel, as the non-human character striving to become human while knowing that she never can be, and yet proving more humane than the real humans when push comes to shove.
That more or less brings us up to this past Friday night, when I taped the Sci-Fi Channel line-up while watching the two-hour premiere of Threshold (which I found surprisingly entertaining and engrossing, enough to plan to tune in and/or tape it next Friday).
I'll confess right now that I've not yet watched the two hours of Stargate: SG1 that I taped Friday night, nor yet watched all of the episode from the week before, but that's not lack of interest on my part: it's just self-defense, saving some new episodes from the first half of this season to tide me over the long, lean months of re-runs between now and the return of new episodes in January (I'm rationing them, to make them last longer).
However, having gained intriguing glimpses of the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica while flipping channels during the commercials of Threshold, I just had to watch that episode in its entirety before I went to bed Friday night. I'm hopeful that this won't spoil anything for anyone, if I just say that the build-up of tension among the individual crew members in the earlier part of the show, followed by an exploration of how they all came back together again, one by one, as they decided against their better judgment to pitch in on the Chief's impossible dream project (reminding me very much of the story of "Stone Soup", for some reason, or possibly I should draw some comparison with the whole "If you build it, he will come" theme from "Field of Dreams"--except that I've never watched that movie in its entirety), culminating (for me) in that move-me-to-tears celebration on the hangar deck near the end . . . WOW! When it comes to emotional roller-coasters with big pay-off finishes, BSG is turning into the super-Cyclone-more-chills-more-loops-monster-roller-coaster of SF television.
Having completely forgotten (to my eternal chagrin) to tape or even watch Justice League Unlimited the week before, I was doubly delighted, then, to be able to tape two new episodes of JLU at a new time on Saturday night.
Between the subtle in-jokes (such as having Scott Patterson's first words as Agent Faraday be an offer to get coffee -- which is what Patterson, as Luke the diner owner, has been doing on Gilmore Girls for many long years!), the long-term character development (loved the tie-in with the Black Hawk Squadron from the WWII time-travel episodes, especially since it reminded Hawkgirl of better, less complicated days, when she was fighting the good fight and not having to cope with "I Hate Hawkgirl web-rings and the like), and even occasional well-placed Biblical references (e.g., "I Am Legion" as the title for the first episode, which worked both as a reference to the as-yet-unnamed Legion of Doom and to Lex being "possessed" to some extent by the demonic vestiges of Brainiac, resulting in his plural sense of self), JLU continues to be a bright spot of intelligence and mythic creativity and play, in the wasteland of weekend programming. I am so hooked by these characters, and by the sheer pleasure of the story-telling and voice work.
I had no reason whatsoever to watch the director's cut of "The Abyss" on Sci-Fi Sunday night, since I own my own copy of that extended version of the film, but somehow or other, I ended up watching the last hour or so over again for the umpteenth time, regardless. What can I say? I just love that ending, when you get to see all the real meat of it that was cut out for the theatrical version.
I'd taped the movie "Alien Resurrection" off of AMC and decided to watch it a week ago Saturday, to see if it was any better than I remembered it or if I could detect more Joss Whedon in it, after being thoroughly saturated with Buffy, Angel, and Firefly re-runs. And this time around, I did seem to recognize a lot more of the plot and characters in "Alien Resurrection" in terms of Whedonesque characters and themes from other shows.
I was particularly struck by the many ways that Firefly was pre-figured in that earlier movie: the semi-piratical tramp freighter, with a crew of gifted and (with the exception of the Ron Perlman proto-Jayne character) mostly loyal misfits. Once you start looking for Firefly parallels, the list just gets longer and longer.
And I'm surprised that I never noticed before how much the android character played by Winona Ryder resembled Spike and/or Angel, as the non-human character striving to become human while knowing that she never can be, and yet proving more humane than the real humans when push comes to shove.
That more or less brings us up to this past Friday night, when I taped the Sci-Fi Channel line-up while watching the two-hour premiere of Threshold (which I found surprisingly entertaining and engrossing, enough to plan to tune in and/or tape it next Friday).
I'll confess right now that I've not yet watched the two hours of Stargate: SG1 that I taped Friday night, nor yet watched all of the episode from the week before, but that's not lack of interest on my part: it's just self-defense, saving some new episodes from the first half of this season to tide me over the long, lean months of re-runs between now and the return of new episodes in January (I'm rationing them, to make them last longer).
However, having gained intriguing glimpses of the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica while flipping channels during the commercials of Threshold, I just had to watch that episode in its entirety before I went to bed Friday night. I'm hopeful that this won't spoil anything for anyone, if I just say that the build-up of tension among the individual crew members in the earlier part of the show, followed by an exploration of how they all came back together again, one by one, as they decided against their better judgment to pitch in on the Chief's impossible dream project (reminding me very much of the story of "Stone Soup", for some reason, or possibly I should draw some comparison with the whole "If you build it, he will come" theme from "Field of Dreams"--except that I've never watched that movie in its entirety), culminating (for me) in that move-me-to-tears celebration on the hangar deck near the end . . . WOW! When it comes to emotional roller-coasters with big pay-off finishes, BSG is turning into the super-Cyclone-more-chills-more-loops-monster-roller-coaster of SF television.
Having completely forgotten (to my eternal chagrin) to tape or even watch Justice League Unlimited the week before, I was doubly delighted, then, to be able to tape two new episodes of JLU at a new time on Saturday night.
Between the subtle in-jokes (such as having Scott Patterson's first words as Agent Faraday be an offer to get coffee -- which is what Patterson, as Luke the diner owner, has been doing on Gilmore Girls for many long years!), the long-term character development (loved the tie-in with the Black Hawk Squadron from the WWII time-travel episodes, especially since it reminded Hawkgirl of better, less complicated days, when she was fighting the good fight and not having to cope with "I Hate Hawkgirl web-rings and the like), and even occasional well-placed Biblical references (e.g., "I Am Legion" as the title for the first episode, which worked both as a reference to the as-yet-unnamed Legion of Doom and to Lex being "possessed" to some extent by the demonic vestiges of Brainiac, resulting in his plural sense of self), JLU continues to be a bright spot of intelligence and mythic creativity and play, in the wasteland of weekend programming. I am so hooked by these characters, and by the sheer pleasure of the story-telling and voice work.
I had no reason whatsoever to watch the director's cut of "The Abyss" on Sci-Fi Sunday night, since I own my own copy of that extended version of the film, but somehow or other, I ended up watching the last hour or so over again for the umpteenth time, regardless. What can I say? I just love that ending, when you get to see all the real meat of it that was cut out for the theatrical version.