304. The ForsakenFORMULA: Manhunt + Liaisons + Disaster + The Nth DegreeWHY WE LIKE IT: O'Brien's tamagochi. A better Lwaxana than usual.WHY WE DON'T: She slept with Tog?!? Gross.REVIEW: The common element in this episode's three plots is people dealing with annoying guest stars. Bashir's got his three ambassadors for some proper comic relief. O'Brien has his stupid Cardassian computer, which is funnier than anything else in the show. And Odo has Lwaxana Troi and her unwanted advances.The latter is what must be considered the A-plot, and you know what? I think that Lwaxana works a bit better when divorced from her TNG home. Away from Deanna and Picard especially, her entire dynamic could be just about anything (a bit like my surprise respect for her and Alexander in Cost of Living). She still gets some terribly annoying scenes to play, but here we get a sense that all the mind-numbing babbling is something of an affectation, a role she plays to make herself interesting. Her interest in the happily lonely Odo ("the thin beige line between order and chaos") becomes a relationship the changeling may want to revisit (have you considered letting her catch you?"), and by their being trapped in a lift together, we learn a little bit more about each character. Vortex told us about his possible origins on the other side of the Wormhole, but here are the first detailed mentions of his life on Bajor. Neither of them wants to show vulnerability, and it's actually touching when they decide to do so with each other.The storyline about O'Brien and his "Pup" has a measure of technobabble in it, but the Chief is always good at making comparisons we can understand and enjoy (thus the whole puppy analogy). I find it extremely entertaining to see him bitch at his console, but that's probably because I do the same thing. Then, when it starts cooperating, he's thanking and complimenting it ("well done, computer") and seems like such a loon, distinguishing tones in its voice. Funny as hell. In the end, it'll turn into 2001: A Space Odyssey ("Dave? My mind is goi....ing."). Let's just say they do well with an invisible antagonist.LESSON: If your computer cooperates with you, there's got to be an alien influence involved.REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Lwaxana's still a pain at times, and spending 45 minutes with annoying and annoyed characters isn't my idea of entertainment, but there's enough genuine humor and heart here to sustain interest, even on repeat viewings. A fairly high Medium.
Buys'n'Gifts
While I don't make a habit of paying for .pdf files, do you know how much AD&D 2nd ed. Planescape products go for on eBay? Not uncommonly 80-100$ and that's before they fleece you on the shipping. But since I'm running that very game, I can't very well sell my stuff off and retire to an island in the Carribean. And I've got most products anyway, but not everything. So eBay -too pricey. Amazon.ca - nothing. Amazon.com - plenty but won't ship to my address. Torents - no available sources online at the moment. Screw it, DriveThruRPG is selling all the old AD&D products at less than 5$ a pop. Not books, but searchable, printable scans. 40$ for Hellbound, Guide to the Astral Plane, Guide to the Ethereal Plane, Uncaged, Faces of Evil, In the Cage, Inner Planes and The Planewalker's Handbook as opposed to 10 gazillion bucks. All I'm missing now is On Hallowed Ground (didn't have it) and Faction War (been warned away too often). Let the gaming continue, I am complete.
In a more physical form, I got me some DVDs: the UK series Shakespeare Retold, which intrigued me as a trailer on As You Like It. These are modern retellings of some of the plays and look amusing enough despite the lack of the Bard's words. Watched about half of it already, and I think it's a winner (more later). And I coupled that with another masterpiece of Japanese cinema, Invasion of Astro-Monster. Don't worry, Godzilla's in it.
And a gift! My good friend Elyse came to Moncton and brought me a fun little book called Where's My Jetpack? A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived. Thanks to her, but no thanks to the guys sitting on the electric car since the 50s. Booo."Accomplishments"Ok, well, at the beginning of the week, I managed 14 Doctor Who CCG cards based on City of Death, which is a great story, but really involved as far as temporal effects go. 5 Scaroths, a way to use them all simultaneously, and plenty of weird and funky effects. I'll probably finish things up on that one tomorrow since we have Canadian Thanksgiving off. The kind of stuff I'm proud of:
Then I got sidetracked because my roommate bought himself an XBox 360 and Halo 3. Finished the storyline a bit quickly (Heroic only though), but I've never flipped a Halo in co-op mode before. Still, I give it props for some great battles with lots of players, really creepy Flood creatures, and much less repetitive stages than the previous two chapters. I loved playing the Arbiter, even though it was obviously Master Chief's story, as he's way cooler and I like Covenant weapons better anyway. Still, I do wish it had ended with the two of us fighting each other over "unfinished business". Ah well.
And finally today played a little Planescape with my group which has quickly devolved into a duo of adventurers. They're well suited to each other, but I'll still make an effort to recruit more. Made the Great Modron March start at the tail end of an adventure in the border town of Automata - in which I used a number of tricks I learned running Paranoia - which amused one player, and bored the other. As a Sensate, the drab, orderly lifestyle would have had that effect, yes, which pushed him to rashly use brawn instead of brains this time around. Still, the story set them up to keep an eye on the March until campaign's end.Website Finds
It's all Ragnell's fault. When she mentioned indexing her Discworld novels on LibraryThing.com, I was intrigued. And now I'm indexing my vast collection of books into it as well. Beats another Excel file collecting dust on my hard drive... but do I need another long project?
Almost at the end, Outsider-lovers!
So Batman is making like a bat-eared rock in the moonlight as a glowing Halo hides behind a tree. It's time to learn a valuable lesson about responsibility.
Batman's reaction to Halo "breaking stealth mode"? Shouting at her from the top of his lungs.
Look at the previous panel again. Is there any kind of sound effect associated with Halo's power blasts? In ANY panel? Certainly, no sound came out of the revolutionary's mouth. They didn't hear HER, Batman, they heard you shouting at her. And once they escape from those thorny bushes they've stuck themselves into, you're gonna pay for that mistake.
Here, Batman is finally ready to accept that it's his mistake. Heavy punching always clears the mind.
Ah, see, didn't actually accept responsibility. The reason Batman actually needs a team? Laying blame.And being the third member of the future Outsiders to get totally pwned by a nameless soldier? Karma in action, baby.
Credit where credit is due department: These guys may be nameless, paper-hat-wearing thugs from a country you've never heard of, but they work fast. Burying Geo-Force faster than Dwayne McDuffie a few pages back, and now making an Ewok pole to carry Batman back to base. They're very efficient.And Halo? Halo's been told not to do a damn thing. When she broke protocol, she got shouted at. She's not making that mistake again. She'll just watch from the shadows from now on. (Of course, shadows can't really exist in her presence...)
Later, Batman wakes up and he's being straddled by cannibal Elijah Wood from Sin City. Oh wait, it's just Lucius Fox. Well cool! He's the guy Batman wanted to rescue! But what's that he's saying? He didn't really want to be rescued? Stockholm syndrome? Just loving the accomodations since they gave him a plush pillow (Metamorpho's buttocks)? Catching up with a long lost brother he didn't know he had (Black Lightning not breaking cover again, ever)?
Ah, finally some answers! In the very last panel, we're going to find out who the villain of our piece is. Who's been able to engineer the capture of the three established superheroes in the group, including the famous Batman. This is gonna be good!
Hum... ok.So it's Baron Bedlam. A tiny dictator who's eyes don't quite reach the door's viewing slot. And so begins Mike Barr's long tradition of introducing lame villains that don't deserve to be in Who's Who (the fact that Baron Bedlam actually made it into Who's Who doesn't change the fact that he didn't deserve to be there.)But we can't leave Batman and friends in the World's Largest Dungeon in the World's Tiniest Country! Though this issue ends, there'll be more to come!
303. If Wishes Were HorsesFORMULA: Imaginary Friend + The Savage Curtain + Where No One Has Gone BeforeWHY WE LIKE IT: Odo guiding emus. Snowing on the Promenade.WHY WE DON'T: "Please refrain from using your imaginations." (But that's the only thing making me think of something else!)REVIEW: Incorporeal aliens from the Gamma Quadrant show up and makes everyone's imagination come alive somehow. That's the fuzzy premise (fuzzy in that some people's imagination is used to give the aliens cover identities they can assume perfectly - without actually understanding humanoid psyche - while others' produces non-character effects like winning latinum or great big sucking wounds in the sky). I've also never liked aliens who don't understand a concept that is otherwise common to everyone we've ever met on Star Trek. Never heard of imagination? How could you even think up your first contact strategy without it?Now if at least the people and things imagined revealed something about the characters, but no, it's al pretty ordinary stuff. Jake and Sisko like baseball. Yes, we knew that. Bashir lusts after Dax. O'Brien is protective of his daughter. Dax is used to thinking about technobabble all day. Quark likes showgirls, and Odo would like nothing better than to see Quark behind bars. There's no surprise here, except maybe Dax's maturity at Bashir's nymph version of her. It's true that she has been a young man.In fact, small character moments do help this episode go down smoothly. Dax calling Bashir on his bull. Odo dealing with flightless birds. Sisko having programmed all the great games into the computer. And the Promenade gets a little surreal for a minute. But we never learn enough about these aliens to make them a worthy science mystery.LESSON: Forget about 1996's Eugenics Wars, the minute someone other than Buck Bokai breaks DiMaggio's record is the real moment our history diverges from Star Trek's.REWATCHABILITY - Low: Look, it's not unbearable, but it is wholly unnecessary and easily skipped.
Dr. Jace's Bunker of Freaks and Horrors (you know they have to be hidden away in the basement). In the middle of a civil war. Night. Geo-Force has just been created and immediately shot. And Metamorpho just came out of nowhere and sprung out of his clothes.
Metamorpho: Good at choosing sides!Oh, and that transforming business.
But as he cages the two already disarmed guys reeking of cider, he makes the same mistake Geo-Force made.
Uhm... what? What kind of gun is this? Some kind of micro-wire thing? Is that standard issue? If he just found it on the ground, what was it doing there? And how lucky was it that it was exactly what you needed to disable Metamorpho? CAN he be disabled this way? I mean, this is a guy who can become a gas, so "staying together" doesn't seem to be much of a priority.
Quick recap: Arguably the two most powerful heroes in the book have just been pwned by a nameless soldier. (This somehow explains the level of villains we'll be meeting in subsequent issues.)
Taking the biggest pause in conversation history, our soldier goes on to bury GF with a tiny shovel.But wait!
ZOMBIE GEO-FORCE!!! (He's not getting any cooler, is he?)
Meanwhile... Batman doesn't have time for your foolish amnesia. He's been in the game long enough that he can find an appropriate superhero codename for you like THAT. Only rookies think of names like Geo-Force.
Batman doesn't have time for your foolish questions. If Batman tells you to land, you land.
And Batman doesn't have time to have the same conversation over and over again no matter how many times you forget it.
So now he's on a stealth mission with a girl who glows in the dark. My first request wouldn't have been to change the color of the halo. How about trying to turn it off completely? Because, you know, a glow is a glow.
Well, I can't see the color, obviously, but I guess if Batman says it's fine, then it's fine. Must be one of those lights that doesn't shine.Two pages left! Tomorrow it all ends... with a cliffhanger!
302. ProgressFORMULA: Preemptive Strike + The Ensigns of Command + Past PrologueWHY WE LIKE IT: The Ja-Nog Consortium (stem bolts especially). A sympathetic Kira.WHY WE DON'T: Bajoran environmental policy.REVIEW: I will always question the decision to destroy an inhabitable moon for the sake of giving "thousands" of homes (not "millions" mind you) power over the winter. Not that similar disregard doesn't happen in the real world, but that the Federation characters in the story are turning a blind eye to it. This is an odd conceit, but one that gets Kira into a difficult situation. She's suddenly part of the establishment, and after being an underdog all her life, it's unpleasant. How do you make that transition when you've "won"?Nana Visitor has a tendency to over-emote in sad scenes, but when restrained and empathetic, she's quite good. Shades of Ro, how she responds to a father figure is key here. Mulibok is a great logician manipulator, a gentle caustic who wins her admiration by being just as hard-headed as she used to be (well, still is). They've got some great scenes together, and her final solution not to choose between her heart and her duty, but in a sense, to choose both, is devastating. And as has become a Kira story tradition, it ends on a down note and avoids a pat epilogue.Sisko also gets to shine here, as he aids and abets Kira by ordering Bashir to give a particular report. As in Captive Pursuit, Sisko gives the benefit of the doubt to his officers, and isn't a rulebook kind of guy. Still, he has a good talk to Kira that hits all the right notes about saving her career and what can actually be accomplished by her act of resistance. He leaves it up to her, and I do think this is where they bond. I'm loving his style.The B-story is a personal favorite, cementing Jake and Nog's charm. In a sort of follow-up to the previous episode, Nog follows "opportunity" with the help of Jake's instincts, and pulls an amusing "red paperclip". The self-sealing stem bolts/O'Brien scene is the standout. The Kira story is a bit heavy, so this light-hearted stuff is definitely appreciated. I should also mention that Dax's (Curzon-propelled?) propensity to find any damn species attractive starts here with a comment about Morn. Kira's disgust also starts here.LESSON: The people and the land are one. (Learned yesterday, but I guess it bears repeating, eh Kira?)REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: An episode that has real heart, important character moments, and even a sense of fun.
Sometimes you get hit in the back of the head so bad, you get aphasia.
Hm, let's see if I can translate this into Bahlactus-speak...Night Series... uhm... That bastard has the no 1 series... Jeff Cobb, Tom Trick, Gorak... 52 tie-in!!!I bet I'm as right as Babel Fish...
304. The Forsaken
