TV: I love a good apocalypse
Day 01 - A show that should never have been cancelled
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
Day 05 - A show you hate
Day 06 - Favorite episode of one of your favorite shows
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of one of your favorite TV shows
Day 08 - A show that's had a significant effect on who you are today
Day 09 - Best scene ever
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show
Day 14 - Favorite male character
Day 15 - Favorite female character
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show
Day 17 - Favorite mini series
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence
Day 19 - Best TV show cast
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite ship
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale
Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First TV show obsession
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death
There are only three shows currently in the works that've caught my attention in the slightest. One is Terra Nova, the going-back-in-time-hay-dinosaurz series from showrunner Brannon Braga, the man behind, let's see, running Ronald D. Moore off Voyager and then subsequently running Voyager, then Enterprise and Threshold (remember Threshold? If so, sorry) and FlashForward. People are going to be expecting Jurassic Park effects on a Babylon 5 budget with the FlashForward showrunner. I give it one season, one painful season.
Another is David E. Kelley's Wonder Woman currently going to pilot at NBC. It's being described as "a reinvention of the iconic D.C. comic in which Wonder Woman -- aka Diana Prince -- is a vigilante crime fighter in L.A. but also a successful corporate executive and a modern woman trying to balance all of the elements of her extraordinary life." Which doesn't sound like Ally McBeal at all. Half an excruciating, embarrassing season, if that.
But if you know me, you know what I'm looking forward to....
Trent Reznor says HBO and BBC Worldwide Productions are moving forward with the development of “Year Zero,” the grim sci-fi epic that Reznor has chronicled in his music as well as in a celebrated Alternate Reality Game (ARG).
And the next four grafs are copied-n-pasted straight from the Wikipedia entry on the ARG:
The story takes place in the United States in the year 2022, which has been termed "Year 0", by the American government, being the year that America was reborn. The U.S. had suffered several major terrorist attacks, apparently by Islamic fundamentalists, including attacks on Los Angeles and Seattle. In response, the government granted itself emergency powers and seized absolute control on the country. The U.S. government is now a Christian fundamentalist theocracy, maintaining control of the populace through institutions like the Bureau of Morality and the First Evangelical Church of Plano. Americans must get licenses to marry, bear children, etc. Subversive activities can result in these licenses being revoked. Dissenters regularly disappear from their homes in the night, and are detained in federal detainment centers and sanitariums, if not executed.
The government corporation Cedocore distributes the drug Parepin through the water supply, making Americans who drink the water apathetic and carefree. There are several underground rebel groups, mainly operating online, most notably Art is Resistance and Solutions Backwards Initiative. The First Evangelical Church of Plano is a fundamentalist Protestant Christian church which is favored by the neo-conservative government.
Amidst all of this are increasing sightings of what is labelled "The Presence", which manifests as a pair of massive ghostly hands and arms extending down from the sky into the ground. Despite early attributions of The Presence to drug-induced mass hysteria, it soon becomes clear that it is a physical phenomenon capable of being recorded on video and film. Theories vary on the real cause of the appearances, but the prevailing opinion appears to be that the hands represent God or some other equivalent supernatural force. On February 10, 2022, a government official named Doug reports that sightings of the phenomenon are rapidly being reported from all over the world. The sequence ends with a broken message announcing the appearance of The Presence over the United States Capitol Building. The message cuts off suddenly, implying the end of the world.
Working to prevent this are the Solutions Backwards Initiative, which is a group of students, professors, and computer experts who devise a successful means with which to send information back through time using quantum mechanics in order to prevent the dystopian future (and eventual apocalypse) they live in from ever occurring. The websites and music of the Year Zero alternate reality game are implied to be part of the information packets sent back through the wormholes.
It's all in the execution here. Love the premise. And I've dug through the ARG enough to appreciate the depth and the texture of this timeline -- it gets harrowing and compelling in certain places. But if this is done badly, you get Escape from LA: The Series. Which doesn't sound all that bad, I guess. But if done really badly, you get Amerika II, and nobody wants that. Tie it together with a strong narrative spine, get some compelling primary characters and some empathetic, ill-fated secondary characters living on the periphery of the main plot, and this could be good. It's a really interesting challenge. I'd donate organs to work on this. Maybe even my own organs.
(And I'm wondering if they'll adjust the timeframe to make the dirty bomb attack on the Academy Awards -- which triggers the nuking of Iran and North Korea -- up two years, so it'd happen in 2011, in time for a certain someone's appearance. That just makes me smile.)
That's a four-year-old trailer for the actual album, but that's exactly what The Presence should be and how it should manifest; with noise and distortion and disquiet.
Tomorrow's choice is an easy one. I've even got an icon for it.
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
Day 05 - A show you hate
Day 06 - Favorite episode of one of your favorite shows
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of one of your favorite TV shows
Day 08 - A show that's had a significant effect on who you are today
Day 09 - Best scene ever
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show
Day 14 - Favorite male character
Day 15 - Favorite female character
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show
Day 17 - Favorite mini series
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence
Day 19 - Best TV show cast
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite ship
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale
Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First TV show obsession
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death
There are only three shows currently in the works that've caught my attention in the slightest. One is Terra Nova, the going-back-in-time-hay-dinosaurz series from showrunner Brannon Braga, the man behind, let's see, running Ronald D. Moore off Voyager and then subsequently running Voyager, then Enterprise and Threshold (remember Threshold? If so, sorry) and FlashForward. People are going to be expecting Jurassic Park effects on a Babylon 5 budget with the FlashForward showrunner. I give it one season, one painful season.
Another is David E. Kelley's Wonder Woman currently going to pilot at NBC. It's being described as "a reinvention of the iconic D.C. comic in which Wonder Woman -- aka Diana Prince -- is a vigilante crime fighter in L.A. but also a successful corporate executive and a modern woman trying to balance all of the elements of her extraordinary life." Which doesn't sound like Ally McBeal at all. Half an excruciating, embarrassing season, if that.
But if you know me, you know what I'm looking forward to....
Trent Reznor says HBO and BBC Worldwide Productions are moving forward with the development of “Year Zero,” the grim sci-fi epic that Reznor has chronicled in his music as well as in a celebrated Alternate Reality Game (ARG).
And the next four grafs are copied-n-pasted straight from the Wikipedia entry on the ARG:
The story takes place in the United States in the year 2022, which has been termed "Year 0", by the American government, being the year that America was reborn. The U.S. had suffered several major terrorist attacks, apparently by Islamic fundamentalists, including attacks on Los Angeles and Seattle. In response, the government granted itself emergency powers and seized absolute control on the country. The U.S. government is now a Christian fundamentalist theocracy, maintaining control of the populace through institutions like the Bureau of Morality and the First Evangelical Church of Plano. Americans must get licenses to marry, bear children, etc. Subversive activities can result in these licenses being revoked. Dissenters regularly disappear from their homes in the night, and are detained in federal detainment centers and sanitariums, if not executed.
The government corporation Cedocore distributes the drug Parepin through the water supply, making Americans who drink the water apathetic and carefree. There are several underground rebel groups, mainly operating online, most notably Art is Resistance and Solutions Backwards Initiative. The First Evangelical Church of Plano is a fundamentalist Protestant Christian church which is favored by the neo-conservative government.
Amidst all of this are increasing sightings of what is labelled "The Presence", which manifests as a pair of massive ghostly hands and arms extending down from the sky into the ground. Despite early attributions of The Presence to drug-induced mass hysteria, it soon becomes clear that it is a physical phenomenon capable of being recorded on video and film. Theories vary on the real cause of the appearances, but the prevailing opinion appears to be that the hands represent God or some other equivalent supernatural force. On February 10, 2022, a government official named Doug reports that sightings of the phenomenon are rapidly being reported from all over the world. The sequence ends with a broken message announcing the appearance of The Presence over the United States Capitol Building. The message cuts off suddenly, implying the end of the world.
Working to prevent this are the Solutions Backwards Initiative, which is a group of students, professors, and computer experts who devise a successful means with which to send information back through time using quantum mechanics in order to prevent the dystopian future (and eventual apocalypse) they live in from ever occurring. The websites and music of the Year Zero alternate reality game are implied to be part of the information packets sent back through the wormholes.
It's all in the execution here. Love the premise. And I've dug through the ARG enough to appreciate the depth and the texture of this timeline -- it gets harrowing and compelling in certain places. But if this is done badly, you get Escape from LA: The Series. Which doesn't sound all that bad, I guess. But if done really badly, you get Amerika II, and nobody wants that. Tie it together with a strong narrative spine, get some compelling primary characters and some empathetic, ill-fated secondary characters living on the periphery of the main plot, and this could be good. It's a really interesting challenge. I'd donate organs to work on this. Maybe even my own organs.
(And I'm wondering if they'll adjust the timeframe to make the dirty bomb attack on the Academy Awards -- which triggers the nuking of Iran and North Korea -- up two years, so it'd happen in 2011, in time for a certain someone's appearance. That just makes me smile.)
Click to viewThat's a four-year-old trailer for the actual album, but that's exactly what The Presence should be and how it should manifest; with noise and distortion and disquiet.
Tomorrow's choice is an easy one. I've even got an icon for it.