I am going to try to create a neologism here.
You have all heard of "jumping the shark", a defining moment in a series where it goes off of the rails forever, never to come back to normalcy. (Or else it wouldn't really be a jump)
However, I don't think there is a term for a singular episode of a series which compared to far superior episodes of the series makes you go "WTF?" Sort of like Spock's Brain in the original Star Trek.
So I am going to coin a term, a "Spock's Brain", to describe an episode of a TV series which is vastly weaker than others of the series. I realize that a Spock's Brain can be subjective, too. To be a Spock's Brain, it should be differently bad enough to stand out in that capacity.
Some Examples:
Star Trek: Original: Spock's Brain. Remote controlled Spock! OY!
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Skin of Evil: Worst episode featuring a major character's death, ever.
Doctor Who: The Web Planet: The Doctor, his companions and a bunch of people acting in insect costumes. Um, yeah.
Babylon 5: Day of the Dead: Um, one day in 200 years, dead come back for a night on one particular planet, and because of a weird arrangement, part of B-5 is transported technomagically across space to be part of it? Not one of Gaiman's best ideas.
Suggestions from the Peanut Gallery for more "Spock's Brains" would be more than welcome.
10.05.2007
SPECIAL EVENT: Remastered "Menagerie" in Theatres!
On Tuesday, November 13, the two-part Star Trek Remastered version of "The Menagerie” will beam onto the big screen in a special engagement with selected theatres. The screening — a first for episodic Star Trek on this scale — will be seen in nearly 300 venues across the U.S. and Canada. This one-night-only event will also feature a special introduction by Eugene "Rod” Roddenberry, son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, plus an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Remastered series.
"The Menagerie" will be presented in its digitally remastered, high-definition format and in Cinema Surround Sound. The screening is in part to promote the HD-DVD/DVD release the following week (Nov. 20) by CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment.
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I think I am going to go have to see this (it IS playing in my area), even if its going to be in "full frame" format. How can you say no to a movie-screen sized Orion slave girl?
EW is a cotton candy of a magazine, with a lot of superficial filler without much content. And their coverage of SF is often atrocious, highlighted, not mitigated, by their recent practice of reviewing SF novels now and again.
So when SF Signal linked to this list they complied of the best Star Trek The Next Generation episodes, I thought that the list was going to be a terrible one.
Go see the list for yourself, its a lot better selection of STTNG episodes than I would have expected.
Roberson's Interminable Ramble: The Lost Saucer
Chris Roberson, spurred on himself by John on SF Signal's admission to liking Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, admits that he himself liked The Lost Saucer and Far Out Space Nuts.
I remember watching all of these shows. And Land of the Lost. And Gilligan's Planet. So I declare its "Low budget TV day" on the Internets!
Why precisely I am still watching this show? I don't know. Perhaps documenting the show from start to finish for posterity?
Spoilers abound.
In this episode, Flash's Best Friend returns, in time to get stung by an alien bug which has gone through an unintentional rift from Mongo to Earth. Dale is forced to make him miserable at the wedding to keep him alive while Flash and Baylin search for a cure...
This was not much of an improvement over Episode 2. The concept is lame and cliched and while the basic idea had lots of potential (alien bugs come through to Earth), it was watered down and denuded of all drama. Instead of dealing with a real crisis, we get painful scenes of Dale acting like a b!tch at a wedding to keep Flash's Best Friend alive. On top of that we get castrating women, more Planet of the Dark Corridors, and people acting stupid.
Segway Guy is still more interesting than Ming and had more screen time(!) I didn't buy the artifact hall at all--is there no such thing as security alarms? Having Aura waltz in and take one of the pieces without disabling any alarms (or Flash doing that for that matter) seemed very wrong. And how did she get free of Flash tying her up so quickly? There was a hint of an idea of Flash owing Aura for the privilege of taking him to get the artifact. I think the episode could have worked much better with Aura forcing Flash to hold to that, and skipping the "Escape from the Water Treatment Plant" sequence.
Having Baylin "come in out of the cold" and then turn around and get outed as a deserter immediately thereafter was a poor use of her character. Again, the writers are missing opportunities left, right and center in this show.
Previews for the next episode suggest that its another "invader through a rift from Mongo". I said it in previous reviews that this concept of the small town continually beset is just not going to hold up on the long run. Force Zarkov, Dale, Baylin and Flash to *stay* on Mongo for a few episodes. Let's see more of Mongo and less of British Columbia.
SF Signal: Two And Done: Flash Gordon
So I watched the second episode of the new Sci Fi Channel version of Flash Gordon...spoilers ahoy.
Its better than the pilot, although that might be damning it with faint praise.
Its the little things and the big things together that bug me.
What happened to Flash's friend (best friend?) Given the implication of how deep the relationship between the two of them was suggested in the pilot, for him not to make an appearance at all in this episode felt false. Is Flash never going to tell his friend about the weird doings with Mongo?
The ice smuggling--impractical at best.
The second bounty hunter. The only reason why I could see he didn't kill the park ranger was because it would have brought the entire house of cards down as far as the "secret" of Mongo. I was afraid of this in the pilot, that its going to be increasingly implausible to keep up this switching between worlds.
Segway guy still out-charismas Ming, although at least this episode we get to see Ming be ruthless in a personal way. Aura, on the other hand, suddenly isn't acting like the spoiled princess she was in the pilot. That's not character growth, that's inconsistency.
Baylin was better in this episode although as seen above, I didn't buy her mate's actions. I suppose they toned it down to keep it relatively family friendly, but still, that just makes the show a boat car, neither one nor the other.
I dislike the new Zarkov more and more. Hes a crackpot without the redeeming value of being a intelligent crackpot. If he could do more acting than just be manic, he might be more tolerable.
Worst of all, we end the episode with the equivalent of a reset button, with the rift closed and Baylin still on Earth.. Is every blessed episode going to be someone from Mongo invading this town in search of Dale, Flash or Baylin?!
Oh, and how did the house get mysteriously fixed before his mother got home? (And how is she going to react to strigil using Baylin cleaning herself, Roman style, with oil in her backyard)?
Via Chris Roberson's blog, a YouTube clip with images from all of the classic Doctor Who episodes, from Unearthly Child to the Doctor Who Movie, with a music background and a few quotes as audio accompaniment (including the immortal "No, not the Mind Probe.")
5 and a half Minutes, 160 episodes.
I heard this on NPR first.
The Weekly World News is going to cease print publication.
For the uninitiated, the WWN is a weekly newspaper/magazine often found in supermarket checkout lines. Their headlines and stories have ranged from the fantastic to the absolutely absurd. "Bat Boy found in Texas Cave!" "Space Alien endorses Clinton for President!"
Movies such as Real Men and Men In Black implied that the outrageous headlines and stories in tabloids very similar to the WWN were, in fact, absolute truth.
My mother had a fondness for it, and taken as absolutely silly material, the WWN was harmless fun.
Gary Westerfahl, on the Locus website, has an interesting essay on the Twilight Zone and its longevity, 40 years later. (Consider, the Sci Fi Channel has a marathon every July 4th of Twilight Zone episodes, and stations in NY once did the same thing over New Year's Day, too).
I think his thesis has merit--the fact that episodes show tragedy in a way that is often not seen in modern media gives them a resonance and speaking to a universal truth in a way that makes them timeless, even given the black and white medium and sometimes silly looking sets.
"Yes, Emperor"
Comedy, Series Premiere.
Hapless minor Chaosian Lord Merlin Sawall (Ben Affleck) finds himself unexpectedly propelled to the top of the hierarchy of the Courts of Chaos and made the new Emperor of the Pole of Reality. Waiting for him there to tell him how to do his job is Lord Humphrey of House Appleby, Permanent Lord of Administrative Affairs in Thelbane, the Palace of the Emperor.
Also making Merlin's life crazy are Sir Bernard of House Woolley (Derek Fowlds), his new Private Secretary obsessed with the minutae of proper Thari, and Merlin's brother Jurt (also played by Ben Affleck), who is convinced he could do the job better.
Future episodes will have guest appearances by Merlin's mother Dara (Tilda Swinton) and Merlin's other. scheming brother Mandor (Jeremy Irons).
American Radio Works, a division of NPR, has a pretty good new radio documentary on the popularity and influence of Japan in pop media. From anime to manga to video games, Japan is riding the crest of a rising popularity of its popular media.
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/japan/index.html
Crooked Timber Morphic resonance on Doctor Who
Over on the Crooked Timber blog, more usually reserved for politics (but there are SF fans there), there is a debate over Doctor Who and Daleks versus Cybermen.
Me, I always thought Daleks were less dangerous than the Cybermen because of the staircase fatal flaw until I saw the 7th Doctor Episode where a Dalek levitates up a staircase toward a trapped Sylvester McCoy...
Via the LJ of a friend of mine.
Andreas Katsulas, the actor who played G'Kar in Babylon 5, died of lung cancer on February 13. Joseph Michael Straczynski, the creator and writer of the series, posted a lovely epitaph on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated, reprinted here.
Rest in peace and sleep in light.
Gilligan star Bob Denver dies at age 70 - TELEVISION - MSNBC.com
Rest in Peace, Bob Denver. Sure, Gilligan's Island was cornball. But it was funny. The fact that its never been out of syndication proves that the comedy, mostly slapstick, and the mix of archetypes in the show worked then, and works now.
NPR : The Fall and Rise of 'Rome'
An NPR story about the 12 part Rome series that HBO is doing. The classics expert they got to talk about it seems very enthusiastic about the level of detail and how right they got the major participants of the period.
I suppose I will have to wait for the DVD--the Olsons don't get HBO even for me to get them to TIVO it.
Goodbye Mr Doohan, who died today at the age of 85.
He who beamed Captain Kirk up innumerable times has now beamed himself up for a grand new adventure, mayhap.
Over on slacktivist is the news that Sesame Street is, in an effort to combat obesity and poor dietary choices in children, changing the nature of the Cookie Monster among other changes in the show.
Ugh!
I don't dispute the need to improve the dietary and exercise habits of children (and many adults for that matter, glass houses and all that). But reducing Cookie Monster's intake of cookies and introducing characters based on eggplant and carrots is not the way to go about it.
Didactic teaching of kids, especially, just doesn't work. Sesame Street used to understand that.
CNN.com - In praise of the mysterious No. 6 - Nov 8, 2004
A little unexpected, finding a paean of praise to McGoohan's brainchild. I picked up the box set of the entire series thanks to an Amazon Gold Box two years ago, and I love the series. Until I picked up Netflix again, I averaged watching at least one episode a week.
And aside from stuff like "The General", the series has not aged. And its themes are still powerful, especially in the climate of today's politics.
The latest old television series to be slated for a DVD release this fall is an old favorite of mine.
Wilma Deering in Spandex! Buster Crabbe cameo! Asimov references! Gary Coleman! Bad science from the get go!
Yep, you guessed it.
Buck Rogers is coming out in DVD.
Cheesy, but I do want it.
I didn't know until a couple of months ago that, finally, eight years after the movie, and fifteen years after the last televised episode, that the BBC was bringing back Doctor Who.
Yes, Doctor Who.
I remained skeptical of such things, but now, I hear, they have finally casted the 9th(?) Doctor, Christopher Eccleston
The name probably isn't familiar to Americans, but he is apparently a big actor in Britain. I have actually seen him once, however, he played the husband of Nicole Kidman's character in "The Others". A small role to be sure. But I thought he did well in the part.
Counting Paul McGann's TV movie Doctor as the 8th, this would be the 9th Doctor in the chronology of the series (assuming they do keep it canonical).