This Week in Geek (3-9/08/09)

Buys

You can't stop Kung Fu Friday (except we didn't have one this week on account of a friend's bachelor party, so I guess you CAN stop it, but you can't stop me from stocking the DVD racks for Kung Fu Fridays to come: Dragon Heat, The Protector and Legend of the Black Scorpion all made it in. On the side, I also got Antonioni's Blow-Up and the HBO film, Conspiracy.

"Accomplishments"

DVD: Took my time, but finally flipped all 14 episodes of Firefly. I come really late to the party, having missed it originally, and then not wanting to get my heart broken by falling in love with something and having it abruptly taken away before its time (again). Well, it doesn't sting as much given the Serenity movie's tying up of at least a few mysteries left open at series' end (I've watched it, but not yet flipped it, keep your eyes peeled), and maybe because I'm used to the purposeful short runs of British tv shows. Bottom line: Every bit as good and inventive as I've been led to believe. Yet another example of Fox not really giving a good show a chance by airing its opening chapter LAST (and three episodes not at all) and canceling it after 11. The boxed set has an entertaining commentary track on half the episodes (both funny and informative), a few deleted scenes (including one that wasn't actually deleted, oops!), some featurettes, and a few unremarkable bits besides. I'm a convert! And so, my heart is broken.

Books: A lot of Doctor Who reading this week as I finished The Left-Handed Hummingbird, a New Adventure by Kate Orman, and then ran right through the next one. In Hummingbird, the 7th Doctor, Ace and Bernice go up against an Aztec god that feeds on death, criss-crossing history a number of times. I've never read an Orman Who book I didn't like and this was no different. Her research is, as always, impeccable, painting an authentic, gorgeously detailed pre-Cortez Mexico. The New Adventures are pretty dark compared to the show and this novel is part of that particular shift. Sometimes hard (the names, the paradoxes, the darkness), but worthy.

Like I said, Hummingbird sent me headlong into the next book of the series, Conundrum by Steve Lyons. A massive change of pace (there's a four-color supervillain on the cover), Lyons offers a sequel of sorts to The Mind Robber (not much of a spoiler, since I guessed it within a few pages) acting as rather amusing meta-textual narrator. It's a send-up of Who fiction and yet the stakes remain high. It's the kind of thing I could see Steven Moffat pulling off in the television medium, and in fact, hits some of the same notes Silence in the Library does. A lot of fun.

Hyperion to a Satyr, entries this week include:
Act I Scene 1 according to Alexander Fodor
Act I Scene 1 according to Slings & Arrows
Act I Scene 1 according to A Midwinter's Dream

New Unauthorized Doctor Who CCG cards: Only 5 (from Fires of Pompeii) as a teaser for the new expansion. Oh, and its booster pack art:
Someone Else's Post of the Week
Bully's Pantone Strips of the Marvel Superheroes is a brilliant, zen-like experience. Standing ovation.