550. UnforgettableFORMULA: Clues + A Simple InvestigationWHY WE LIKE IT: Oscar nominee Virginia Madsen. I guess.WHY WE DON'T: A lot of talk about a lot of chemistry.REVIEW: From science fiction to science fantasy to fairy tales... That's the direction Voyager is taking. The concepts they're throwing out are becoming less and less believable I'm afraid. Unforgettable features a race of beings who apparently live deep down in a plot hole. They produce pheromones that inhibit your short term memory so that you don't remember them. This ability somehow also affects recording equipment and sensors, and specifically attacks memories about them. Voyager doesn't seem to have lost a few weeks of memory, just those relating to these people. The Doctor seems affected. And though their isolationist nature also gives them cloaks and a virus that destroys evidence of their presence in a computer database, I guess they never thought of someone writing out their story on a piece of paper. What about if I phone my mom and tell her about them. Will she forget?So it's those kinds of thoughts that are going through my head constantly while I'm supposed to be enjoying the love story between Chakotay and Kellin. Not that this romance isn't anything but a babble-o-thon. There's an awful lot of talking about why these guys fell in love and not a lot of showing. Virginia Madsen is good at that, as she would show in Sideways, but the script isn't on Sideways' level. Neither the dialogue or the ears are particularly complimentary. As soon as she mentions some mind-wiping technology, well, you can guess the ironic ending.The cast is usually good though, when they're on screen and not simply talked about. Chakotay's trust issues seem very natural after the way other women have burned him in the past. Seven of Nine's contempt for mating rituals is more Odo than Data, but almost seems like a flash of jealousy initially. Is this the kind of relationship building block they used to justify Voyager's ending? One thing I must say though, is that if she's ever to learn how to be human, they have to stop partnering her with Harry. Poor, incisive, eloquent Harry. NOT! And then there's Neelix, who's turning into a late night Guinan, but I like him in that role. As with Quark, a little goes a long way, and he acts here as the anti-Seven.LESSON: I learned one, but I forgot what it was. Oh yeah! In matters of the heart, people never learn.REWATCHABILITY - Medium: I know it's easy to say this, but nonetheless... A forgettable episode. Groan if you like, but it's true.
I talk a lot about older comics, but this week, I want to give more recent fare its due. So every day, it'll be 5 things I liked about a recent release. Hope you liked 'em too. To start us off, a nice little book that surprised me this week, but then, I should have had faith in Captain Britain and MI13 #1 thanks to thing #5...5. Paul Cornell
Look at that, ma! It's a Secret Invasion tie-in and I'm loving it! Why? Because Paul Cornell, that's why. I've loved this man's Doctor Who-related work for years (and he's very nice too), and he has an obvious love for British superheroes. In my youth, I often thought how I could write better stories for Alpha Flight than most of the writers who worked on the title. You know, just because I live in Canada. I know what the Canadian experience is about. Well, Cornell understands the British experience, and this book'll be very different, I think, than the usual Marvel fare. Odd and quirky and magical. Heck, the Skrull invasion as presented here works without all that tie-in business and would be at home on Who!4. Skrull John Lennon
You know, this idea probably shouldn't work, but it really does. Probably because the Skrully doesn't try to have anyone believe he's the real deal. Fun and bizarre, just like I like my comics.3. It stars possibly the only Marvel UK fan
I really hope Faiza doesn't bite it because this fan of British heroes' enthusiasm is actually infectious. Marvel UK was a product of Marvel's 90s explosion and imploded just as fast, but it existed, and if MI13 is going to potentially use every UK character (à la All-Star Squadron), we need someone who's memorized their trading card stats. I mean... Digitek?2. Captain Britain is given his rightful place
Now THAT's a proper hero moment.1. Cornell's reinvention of the Black Knight
Having the Black Knight adopt the UK is a great idea, and though I was a fan of the character back in his Avengers days, he's a lot more fun here. Nice new look, but also a new attitude. To keep the ebony blade from influencing his mind, he takes a detached view of everything. He's the hero who can't affort to care. Is it me, or is that brilliant?
549. The Omega DirectiveFORMULA: The Enterprise Incident + Jetrel + Lower Decks + Rightful HeirWHY WE LIKE IT: Seven's leadership skills.WHY WE DON'T: God is technobabble.REVIEW: Voyager's always had a science fantasy bent, but we're really getting into the "magical" phase of the show lately. This time, we're presented with a magic molecule that could be God. I'm not up on my quantum physics or anything, but is there anything about this so-called "perfect" molecule that makes sense? This thing is so magical that's it's actually MYTHICAL, figuring into a number of creation myths across the galaxy.The conceit is that single unstable molecule can apparently destroy subspace on a massive scale, and since having access to warp travel is apparently more important to Starfleet than non-interference, we have the Omega Directive hijacking the ship's monitors, Janeway going into top secret mode, and characters speculating, Lower Decks-style, about what the heck is really going on. They all find out, of course, but it's not like Janeway destroys all KNOWLEDGE of Omega here, just the particles. I don't know what's stopping these aliens from reproducing the experiment or sharing their information with someone else. This story could have been more like In the Pale Moonlight, with the bodies and ethical atrocities piling up. Instead, it turns into an exploration of Seven's spirituality and the Section 31 stuff (if I may call it that) takes a back seat.This episode is an excellent showcase for Seven, don't get me wrong. The fact she has the knowledge of many Starfleet captains in her head includes her in Janeway's plan from the start, and the way she organizes her taskforce, giving them all drone numbers, is great fun. The episode almost starts like Data's Day, as she lets us in on her very strict agenda, which includes compensating for Harry Kim's small talk. But they've given her (and the Borg) a very strange drive here. The Borg now have a "religion" and it's the same as Voyager's, really. Worshiping at the altar of weird science. It's hard to get interested when the holy grail is entirely made up of technobabble, y'know? Seven's spiritual experience itself is well played, but that's it really. The show's been so adamantly atheistic that it can't go anywhere with it. And if we're going to explore Seven's spirituality, why not do it in a human context (confronting her to her actual heritage) instead of coming up with a nonsensical Borg equivalent?LESSON: God is the Alpha and the Omega, so there must be an Alpha Directive as well.REWATCHABILITY - Medium: A mishandled attempt at looking at religion from Seven's point of view nonetheless yields good scenes for the character.
Buys
Tons, most of it on sale, so I'm really spending money to save money, and that's how I justify it. Here's a list of DVDs that'll have to stand on its own: The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus, Bubble, Gangs of New York, Juno, Hot Fuzz, The Wire Season 1, Matchstick Men, All the President's Men, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, Glengarry Glenross, and Doctor Who's Beneath the Surface boxed set, which includes Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Sea Devils, and Warriors of the Deep."Accomplishments"
Finished Chuck Palahniuk's Choke, a novel that's been turned into an August cinematic release. The big question is: How are they going to do this with only an R rating? I'm being facetious, it's quite doable, but the book is pretty pornographic at times, not to say obscene, which it also is. In a nutshell, it's about a sex addict who pays for his criminally insane mother's health care by faux-choking in restaurants and collecting favors from the "heroes" he creates. It's also a perverse version of the New Testament. So there. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though yeah, sometimes it did read a little too much like Fight Club.
On the DVD side of things, I flipped the first season of the newly arrived The Wire, which I'd heard good things about, but never seen. Turned out to be a real joy. I can only rave about its authenticity and dark humor, and I think the creators succeeded in their goal (according to the three included commentaries) of crafting a novel for television. There's a lot of subtle mirroring of scenes and other directorial and scriptwriting tricks that make this easily rewatchable. I'll be investing in the remaining seasons.
Last Role-Playing Monday, we wrapped up our little superhero game. Not a big revelation - I've been supers gaming on and off for years now, and this wasn't one of the better games - but I still enjoyed the idea of starting with highly experienced characters who had all these archenemies going after them for past deeds not explained.New Unauthorized Doctor Who CCG cards: 9 (wrapping on School Reunion). Stripping Logopolis is next on my list.GTA4 completion: 48.95%. Addiction Level: Tweaking Hard.Someone Else's Post of the Week
I'm giving this one to Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin: An incomplete list of silly and completely unprofessional things we've done at the store over its 28 year history. That sounds like a fun store. Hail to the chief!
548. Vis à VisFORMULA: Turnabout Intruder + RevulsionWHY WE LIKE IT: It's not easy to fake Starfleet.WHY WE DON'T: What happens to B'Elanna.REVIEW: Tom's mid-life crisis pretty much comes out of nowhere, without any kind of build-up, and this time, he's not faking it. The psychological reason, as presented, is that his life is so settled (job and girlfriend and respect) that he feels trapped. Sounds more like the Tom Paris from the series bible than the character he's since become. Perhaps the question I should be asking is why Tom's suddenly a subspace mechanics expert and helping Steth repair his ship's engine instead of either Seven, Harry or B'Elanna. I guess the chief engineer is too pregnant to get any scenes where she's not hidden behind a countertop. It's that interchangeability that makes me think the characters are essentially serving a plot, fitting their square pegs into its round holes as best they can, instead of the reverse. Tom needs to be rebellious, he needs to be a super-mechanic, and so he is.Steth's magical body switching - because it is magic, I don't know why a psionic solution wasn't used - leads to perhaps the best and the worst of all "pretender" moments. In the past, pretenders have been able to function relatively easily within the Starfleet structure, often with explanation, sometimes not (think MacDuff in Conundrum). As he experiences a day in the life of Tom Paris, he sees that it isn't all fun and games (indeed, didn't Tom's malaise register at all?). So for once, we're shown a pretender who has difficulty fitting in. And realistically, that's what would happen. Where it goes astray, in my opinion, is that it's heavily inferred that he slept with B'Elanna during that time, essentially violating that character. Distasteful as it is, what's even worse is that this is never addressed. B'Elanna seems fine. Tom seems fine. More magic.As for the rest of the plot, it goes pretty much exactly where you think it's going, and there's little surprise when Steth turns out to have taken Janeway's form. The Benthan ship design is really, really interesting, but sadly has to be a one-off. Though a coaxial warp drive system gets installed into a shuttle, it's a surprise that Janeway doesn't immediately ask if Steth can share it. Nor is it ever mentioned again. So much for adapting new technologies to get home. In the end, of course, Tom learns a valuable lesson about how good he has it on Voyager, but I thought he knew this already. Our lesson?LESSON: You can spot a friend in crisis by the fact he stops combing his hair.REWATCHABILITY - Medium-Low: Oh, it's watchable, but I'm low-balling it because of the creepy implications and disregard for real characterization.
Rom left to die at the end of issue 6? Say it ain't so!It ain't so.In the letters page, Bill Mantlo himself says he has plans at least through issue 12. So relax. Sit back. Rom ain't goin' nowhere. The letters page also reveals that if we haven't seen the Dire Wraiths' true form yet, it's because Parker Brothers are working on the action figure. Well, that never happened, so it'll teach me to believe everything I read in a letters page.But back to our favorite Spaceknight. Rom is indeed in dire straits as he lay dying in Steve's garage. His neutralizer is still trapped in a Dire Wraith forcefield (those things just keep on ticking man!) and he hasn't given any sign of life in hours. Artie, a cop who went to high school with Steve, comes over for some down-low action, but is outraged that Steve is hiding a stone cold killer. Well, a stone cold DEAD killer, at any rate. But in small town Clareton, you trust the ones you came up with.
Bringing Rom to the hospital is no easy task. Steve weighs him at about 850 lbs. and there's the dead weight index to worry about. It's the wind chill of lifting bodies. Man, I did NOT realize how big Rom was.
Marvel Universe Deluxe has him at 7 feet, but Jeezum Rice! He seems much bigger than that. Or maybe Brandy is very petite. Not sure what they're planning to do in a hospital laboratory, but between Steve's mechanical know-how and Brandy's... uhm... administrative assistant status (the labcoat is just so they won't stop her dwarven ass in the halls as ask for her pass, I guess), they hook Rom up to booster cables and hope for the best. When nothing happens, poor Brandy blames Jealous Steve for not trying very hard and bangs her head against Rom's chest.
Meanwhile, the Wraiths are busy stealing that neutralizer and sowing the Earth with vile seeds.
It's Day of the Triffids meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets The Invaders meets War Against the Chtorr meets Octopus Love!
Artie bites it before Rom can wake up to ask "was someone banging me?", but once he does, watch out. It's weeding season!
When I keep saying Rom is a cold mother------, I mean literally cold. Badass cold. And he don't care what vegetable he hurts.
Steve helps out with a fire extinguisher, completing the homoerotic cycle we've all been trapped in for 21 pages: Steve's "fast" thinking and "siphoning" of Rom's extra energy has climaxed into the nasty tentacle love going limp.
Perhaps my favorite bit: How Rom interrupts Brandy here with "Enough!" Less talk, more sending Wraiths to Limbo.But what about poor Artie?
Rom does not reach out to Steve. He doesn't do "comforting". He doesn't do "consoling". You're on your own.
BONUS CHARACTER FIND!Rom really came out of nowhere to become a rousing success and the character find of 1979-80. Could Marvel do it again? The letters page has the following ad for its all-new western hero destined to become a legend!
Caleb Hammer, huh? Let me think... Two-Gun Kid... Phantom Rider... Rawhide Kid... Nope, doesn't ring a bell. Rom stands alone!
547. The Killing Game, Part IIFORMULA: Patterns of Force + Our Man Bashir + Hippocratic OathWHY WE LIKE IT: Seven in a black cat suit.WHY WE DON'T: Just a lot of noise.REVIEW: Though there's something to be said about the way Janeway thinks on her feet and manipulates the various "holographic" characters in Part II of The Killing Game, the episode otherwise falls quite short of the first one's promise. It's just a lot of running around and shooting, shooting, shooting, and more shooting. The various simulations (in fact, there are only two running) never significantly interact to create the kind of cool/fun nonsense Part I dished out.When the characters wake up, there's some attempt to give them stuff to do, but things like B'Elanna's holographic pregnancy (and Dawson's own), well used in Part I, seem wasted here. There's some humor to the proceedings, but it clashes with such scenes as the evil Nazi captain's extended speech about racial purity. I know they're trying to present the ideology here, but did we need to linger on it that long? It somehow convinces a Hirogen to shoot his leader, but the entire sequence seems unnecessary. The Killing Game isn't ABOUT racial purity or Nazism. And despite the gratuitous death of Karr, the Hirogen still embrace his vision later.None of the humor really pops, in fact, whether it's Neelix trying to pacify the Klingons, or Tom's American slang. It all falls flat amidst the empty violence. Only Janeway comes up aces, manipulating both the "holographic" crew and the Hirogen, as well as defeating the one hunting her with guile and cunning. And of course she signs a treaty with the hunters...It's surprising there's so much padding in this thing, considering they have to tell us about the climax in a log. Yes, somehow, with the ship heavily damaged and the crew sporting multiple injuries, the fighting "comes to a standstill" against more than 80 armored Hirogen hunters and four of their ships. For some reason, the latter are quite willing to parlay with their prey (which has never been done) and accept the holographic technology as a gift EVEN THOUGH they don't share Karr's ideas. So Voyager really had their asses over a barrel! I guess! Lazy writing across the board.LESSON: It doesn't matter who the father is so long as you can say "Computer, delete pregnancy".REWATCHABILITY - Medium-Low: If Part I had a lot of goofy fun, Part II misses the mark by light-years. This time, we're not so willing to suspend our disbelief.
550. Unforgettable
