TV Review: Battlestar Galactica

I can be like a daggit with a Borellian bone once I get an idea in my head, so I recently finished re-watching the entire GOL-MONGING saga of Battlestar Galactica! As my pal Kirk asked: "For punishment?" 

Was it all worth it? You decide! (No, strike that. I'll decide.)

Of course, I watched it the way the One True God intended: Chronologically by Content! 

First- the Remake's Prequel Series! "Caprica", or as it is more popularly known- "Patton Oswalt Explains It All", takes us far way and long ago to a decadent planet where everything is edgy except the sheets of paper. (Because all the corners are cut off. Actually... they have MORE edges. I might be getting off topic...) Everyone's out for number one as an evil robot army congeals inexorably out of the quest for immortality during a clash of political, religious, and racial ideologies. Plus it has Eric Stoltz!

Fav. Ep.: "Apotheosis"- Cylon heroes fight for the forces of decency and corporate profit vs monotheist terrorists in a crowded sports stadium! There may be some explosions involved.

Least Fav. Ep.: "Retribution"- Intrigue becomes intriguing as machinations turn wheels within wheels and schemes near the point of no return while the thick, simmering plot begins to... *snore*

Next, I watched Battlestar Galactica (2004) AKA "Battleglum Galacticglum". It's as glum as the Black Hole of Hades but on stunning blu-ray it turns out it's also one of the finest TV dramas of my lifetime. There, I admit it.

Fav. Ep.: "Battlestar Galactica: The Plan" Again, the Cylons are the heroes! Yes, he may stab little children, but he's Dean Stockwell, so it's all good!

Least Fav. Ep.: "Black Market" If it wasn't bad enough that Re-imagined Apollo had a dull, human name like Lee Adama, now they've made him a whoring John with a heart of gold. Who battles child sex slavers! Yikes! It may or may not be the darkest tale from a collapsed society trapped in the void of space, but it's pretty dark stuff.

From the troubled ancestors of the Incas, the Toltecs, and the Lemurians we proceed to the star-brothers of contemporary man: on a 30 year star voyage beginning sometime after 1969, culminating in 1980, and full of too many other inconsistencies to believe for a single micron!

Battlestar Galactica (1978) is a ridiculous, archaic piece of misogynist quasi-Mormon laser disco. Dirk "Face-Man" Benedict and Lorne "Bonanza" Greene light up the small screen, sharing equal billing with some poor chimp stuffed inside a Muppet. Kids will scratch their heads with delight unless they were born in the late seventies. In which case they already spent hundreds of centons watching and loving it like an Ovion grub loves an overfed gambler who's stumbled drunkenly into its honeycomb!

Fav. Ep.: "Saga of A Star World" This is where it all began! Well, "Star Wars" is where it all began, but this is also available! 

Least Fav. Ep. Tie: "The Lost Warrior" & "The Young Lords". Which is worse: space cowboys in tinfoil Stetsons versus a tribe of horny pig-men, or seven to twelve 7 to 12 year olds in ratty Viking costumes riding unicorns against the most flamboyant candy-cane that ever called itself a Cylon?

Yeah, the cutesy robots are purest felgercarb. Granted, my beloved Muffit 2 gets a pass, but the goofy awkward "dancing" Hector & Vector were MUCH worse. Just picture the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz re-imagined as a pair of pasty dildos in overalls. Just awful. 

Honourable mention: "Experiment in Terra" for having all the conceptual ingredients for "Quantum Leap". It's not as good by half as any episode of Quantum Leap, but the seed is there.

Galactica 1980 AKA "Space Invaders Meet Wolfman Jack". This is where the punishment really begins, but I'm a completist, gods frack it all. Our rag-tag fugitive fleet has lost all but 2 of its lead characters and replaced them with one angelic teenage boy with magic science powers. You'll believe a motorcycle can fly.

Fav. Ep.: "The Return of Starbuck" It does what it says on the tin, and it's not half bad. Again, the evil Cylon is the good guy. What does this say about me, I wonder?

Least Fav. Ep.: "Spaceball" Precocious super-powered moppets spewing precocious nonsense and playing baseball as if they were from space. Get it?

Series creator Glen A. Larson, made a lot of cool things happen on TV for a lot of years. This was definitely one of my favourites, along with the arguably slightly more successful 'Buck Rogers'. Also, I read that Mr. Larson stole a song from James Garner, so Rockford socked him in the snoot! 

Series re-imagineer Ronald D. Moore used to work on Star Trek. He's good at stuff.

Much praise extended to Netflix, YouTube, and my buddy Ron for the blu-rays that made it all possible. So say we all!

TV Review: LEXX

In terms of SF Comedy where a low-ranking slacker, a re-animated dead guy, a libidinous part-animal creature, and a fussy, broken robot wander a universe devoid of humanity in an empty spaceship 10,000 meters long there is only one work of timeless, extraordinary genius-- Red Dwarf.

Also, starting in 1997, LEXX was on!

Brought to you by two countries that know a little something about side-splitting humour and atrocity, Germany and my own native land, Canada, created a hot little mess of program I never hear anybody talking about.
And I watched all four seasons just for YOU! Well, you and boobs. Yes, there are a couple of boobs, plus some bums also.

The series fits no single category I know: Grand Guignol? Erotic Satire? Dystopian Musical? Sociopath Date Movie? It features the epic, 4000 year quest of repugnant, self-serving Security Guard Class 4 Stanley H. Tweedle to find meals and sex while trying not to be eaten or screwed over. Through no effort of his own, Stan is thrown together with Xev Bellringer (a truculent women raised in a "Wife Bank" and accidentally given the powers of a voracious giant lizard), Kai (last of a noble race who defied the unspeakable oligarchy of His Divine Shadow and was punished with eternal servitude as an unstoppable zombie assassin), and (last and least) 790, a severed head with an all-enveloping snark and an all-consuming passion. Speaking of "all-consuming", these troubled... people, I suppose, live inside the stolen command ship of His Divine Shadow, a giant, living, not-too-bright space dragonfly that is always very hungry and loves to destroy a lot of planets.

To sum up, Season 1 is 3 great movies and a 4th so-so movie that throws the crew together, defines their messed-up, so-called "Light Universe", and pits evil against... somewhat less evil. Season 2 is too long and repetitive to be endured in the now-popular "binge watching" approach but basically features the inverse of the Star Trek away team "seeking out new lays in new civilizations where the girls and boys are not too picky or hung up on physical attractiveness or strength of character" every single planet of which ends up obliterated by a self-replicating, galaxy-sized swarm of worker drone arms. Season 3 picks up as LEXX explores the flawed workings and horrible secrets of twin planets Fire and Water. Season 4 finds them in the Darkest depths of the Dark Zone, orbiting the barren single moon of a primitive little Type 13 planet months away from self-destruction by the combined efforts of goths, fairies, geeks, a vampire, a mummy, a demon, several corrupt government agencies, reality TV, Newfoundland, and an asteroid crammed full of scuttling cyborg carrots hell-bent on jumping up everyone's butts. For good or for ill, there has never been another show like this.

Maybe LEXX is the weird inbred cousin the sci-fi family never talks about, and maybe I wouldn't revisit it very often, but in my current mood it hit a certain nostalgic "Who-Gives-A-Shit" button for me. And even though I really, REALLY shouldn't... I liked it.

The moral of the story, if LEXX can be said to have anything resembling a moral, is this: you may think your life sucks-- but (just like most people, things and people-things) life could always suck harder.

TV Review: Roughnecks Starship Troopers Chronicles

Ask not what your late '90's CGI military SF series can do for YOU...

Engaged in the obsessive goal of reading and watching everything Robert Heinlein spawned (even peripherally), I was excited to find "Roughnecks Starship Troopers Chronicles" on DVD at the used bookstore Wee Book Inn. And I finally finished watching it today, only 15 years late to the battlefront. One season with a gluttonous 36 episodes- not counting a whopping FOUR clip shows. Sweet Christmas, talk about overkill!

Entrenched in day 43 of the Interstellar Bug War, the space marines of SICON have seized and maintained a firm hold on Uncanny Valley. Seen here is psi-talented trooper Carl Jenkins, overcome with childlike glee...

Oh, my mistake, that's a Cybernetic Humanoid Assault System, or CHAS. This robot character was featured in the best episode of the series- "Of Flesh and Steel", making the ultimate sacrifice for the salvation of all Non-Bug-Kind...

No, sorry, right the first time. THIS is CHAS. That dead-eyed hobgoblin up there was Carl, all right.

Stiff, wooden, creatures from hell (and their foes, the bugs of Klendathu) battle across simulated ice, "water", jungle, and desert with all the sex and violence available to the impressionable North American youth of 1999 at 6 AM on a Saturday.

But, to its credit, this series is actually the first Starship Troopers product to fulfill my twisted desire for chronological completeness by finally mentioning that (in this flat little dimension at least) Rico and chums signed up to stomp arachnids in 2078. If only this trivia made the series better. O.K., so the campaigns have their moments... usually taken word-for-word from the first movie.

Wee Book will get this one back... if they are unwary enough to take it! Final Score from best to worst: ST the movie, ST: Invasion, ST the book, ST3, ST2, and, in fairness, I haven't found the eighties era anime adaptation yet, but it CAN'T possibly be worse than ST2.

The best I can say is that all the folks behind this forgettable, humourless toon were probably killing themselves making so much with so little. "Reboot" had it beat all hollow, but for someone with helmet-mounted nostalgia goggles on, it's probably fine... in teeny, tiny, firefry-sized doses.

TV Review: Sliders Seasons 1-5 on Netflix

If there was ever a need for a blog post demonstrating an appalling waste of the precious gift of life- here it is!

What? You've never heard of Sliders? The brilliantly conceived Tracy Tormé SF series of 1995 that collapsed like a disused wormhole into the David Peckinpah crap-fest of 1999? Well, you don't have to watch it! Not like I had to.

YES, I HAD TO.

Just like settling back into a nice, harmless Netflix obsession, when you step into a wormhole in search of scientific discovery, you take a mighty big risk. Wanna be guillotined on live TV by Donny Most? 'Cause that's one of hundreds of terrible icky ends you might come to... and no one from your home world will ever find out!

SPOILERS! First of all- don't watch it. Like the poorly-explained mental mystics who appear all too often in this series... Heed My Warning! If you must... stop after Season 1. Seriously. It doesn't get better. Cheesier, cheaper, more heartbreaking. Never better. If you JUST CAN'T STOP... please save your sanity with the hilarious reviews on Earth Prime. 

Season 1- Has excellent ideas, comedy, jeopardy, adventure... and gets you very attached to a haphazard little family who are all about to die horribly, without purpose, and usually offscreen. 
Season 2- Shark. Jumped. Network interference making a hash of continuty and reason. 
Season 3- Utter madness. Season 3 actually cost a human life (stunt performer Ken Steadman) for a tepid stew of '90's film pastiche. 
Season 4- Starts to show purpose and promise again... pisses it all away in the last three episodes. 
Season 5- When the original cast is all replaced- that's when the magic happens!

My mistake was treating it as alternate history SF when suddenly telepathy, dragons, and sorcery crop up. And just as I'm thinking "Fantasy's good too..." very quickly explosions replace any coherent thought at all! Just as I'm thinking "Well, I like explosions..." they can't really afford that! So it's down to horror. Horror of war, horror of alien nazis, horror of being lost and losing your mind. The pompous voice of Professor Max (John Rhys-Awesome) Arturo silenced by Roger Daltry. Wade (Sabrina The Teenage Lloyd) Welles sentenced by sadistic (I guess you'd call them) "writers" to an ape-man "breeding camp" (the only fate worse than season 3 itself). Quinn (Adorable Kid from "My Secret Identity") Mallory is somehow sort-of-but-not-really fused with another actor or something mumble mumble and ends his life literally just trailing off like this sentence. Last and Least poor Colin (My Brother was in "The Invisible Kid"!) Mallory- Nobody Knows! Best case scenario: amiable Amish guy was "spread like a very fine jam across an infinite number of universes". 

And just as you're thinking "At least I kind of like horror..." there's the indignity. It's just not working at all. What a lot of these parallel worlds have in common is soul-crushing boredom. In the last episode I'm staring at a handful of people I never liked (Boobs McGee, Shrugging "Science" Girl, and Hazy Von Hair Gel) while watching Rembrandt ("Better Than The Material") Brown slide into an unresolved cliffhanger to be mourned forever. A catastrophic level of sloppy, disjointed, implausible storytelling with no sense of follow through. But Quinn took his shirt off a lot!

Guest appearances from Mark Allen Shepherd, Conner Trineer, Tommy Chong, Jerry Doyle, and Peter Jurasik cannot save it. A couple of gems like "Worldkiller", "New Gods For Old" and MAAAYBE "Requiem" are all I can recommend after Arturo's death (which was where I was once forced to stop watching by circumstance and must now admit I was better off.)

Maybe it's a waste of the potential, but if I had sliding technology my fantasy would be to see a world where "Sliders" was actually well executed!

Now, if you'll excuse me- Netflix is infinitely deep & I must start shotgunning Hercules and Xena.

TV Review: Star Wars Clone Wars

'Star Wars The Clone Wars' ran from Oct 2008 to March 2013, and last week I finished re-watching it from the beginning so I could enjoy the "Netflix Exclusive" Season 6 "The Lost Missions" in context. Should I start a review with a spoiler? It's awesome. You may now fall over dead from Not Surprised!

The animation is absolutely beautiful, and to the extent that I understand such things, the editing and direction are splendid. Within the constraints of the programme, the writing is usually very good. Specifically, the stories are vignettes sandwiched between the known events of Star Wars Episode II and Episode III (and possibly also between the wipes in the 15th MINUTE of Genndy Tartakovsky's 2003-2005 Star Wars: Clone Wars Volume 2). (ALL of which I loved and will brook no complaints about, no matter how reasonable those complaints may be.)  Very few things in life transport me back to childhood quite like Star Wars, and that's a special pleasure.

The regular voice cast are appealing (special mention: Matt Lanter since he's the best prequel Anakin actor yet) but the guest performer highlights included luminaries such as Clancy Brown, Jim Cummings, Greg Cipes, Phil LaMarr, Jon Favreau, Seth Green, Michael York, Katee Sackhoff, Tim Curry, Simon Pegg, and David Tennant. Also, for authenticity: Peter Mayhew, Ahmed Best, Anthony Daniels, Daniel Logan, Mark Hamill, and Liam Neeson. (They were not hurting in the vocal department.)

One complaint I've heard is that it's kid stuff. (This is completely true. Kid stuff tends to be awesome!) I feel like it manages to offer plenty of shades of meaning, but then again the villains have names like Cad Bane. Or, for colour, Dooku and Durd. (Something smells stinkowiff...)

Lok Durd is a voluminous slimy alien voiced by the effervescent George Takei. "You are now under the protection of the Separatist Alliance," Durd intones at a cuddly old monkey-man. "I congratulate you on your good fortune." Followed, inevitably by "Ransack this dung heap!"

I can't give much credence to the idea that "utterly disposable" armies of clones on one side and droids on the other means there's no-one to care about! Ridiculous! To the programme's credit I not only felt sorry for many of the "heroic" clones- but even now and then for the "evil" droids. Still, apart from the cannon fodder, there's a galaxy of other characters to adore and despise. Only YOU will know how to feel about Sy Snootles after this...

I'm probably the wrong gender to comment, but I will say that the series had better roles for females (i.e. Ventress, Tano, and Offee- seen above) than any previous Star Wars, and that Katie Lucas is a much better writer than the nepotism would first suggest.

Picking a favourite episode has proven impossible. In general, seasons 2 and 4 were strongest and season 6 perhaps the most uneven, but Yoda fans will be richly rewarded in the final arc ("Voices/Destiny/Sacrifice") for slogging through a couple of episodes about banking deregulation. (Seriously? For kids!)

So, at last, some highly arbitrary special mentions: Favourite Ship Battle: "Shadow of Malevolence". Favourite Jar Jar Story: "Bombad Jedi". Favourite Hot Mess: Ziro the Hutt's Mama. Favourite cameo from '80's Nelvanna cartoon "Droids": R2-KT. Favourite Monster of Mass Destruction: the Zillo Beast. Story Arc With The Least Pay-Off: Darth Maul's Resurrection. (I know he's cool- but to what END? Most adorable youngling in "The Gathering": Gungi. Most Futile Death: three-way tie: Gregor/Tarpals/Fives.

Disney will get their chance, and no doubt their efforts in "Rebels" and Episode VII will be the best that ever was! We'll soon see. Always in motion is the future...

TV Review: Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

For normal reasons, I've spent some time over the last two weeks watching a cartoon which apparently aired on NBC Saturday mornings 1981-1983: Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Or SMAHAF as the kids are never calling it these days.

Featuring the voices of Dan "Spidey" Gilvezan, Frank "Iceman" Welker, and introducing Kathy "Firestar" Garver. No, not Starfire, the Teen Titan! Wrong company. You tryin' ta get us sued? FIRESTAR! The Girl Who Was on Fire Class of 1981. Take that, Katniss!

Unable to use the Human Torch for the usual overwrought reasons ("My kids always douse themselves in gasoline and dive off the roof!") Peter Parker conveniently found a team-mate with BFF Johnny Storm's firepower plus the looks of Mary Jane. Talk about your amazing friend!

Although, in fairness, neither John Storm nor Mary Jane Watson may exist in what is now known to the Intelligentsia (I mean, the Hyper-Nerds) as Marvel Universe 8107. The cartoon dimension's rules only apply to itself, not the continuity of the mainstream comics (Universe 616, don't cha know).

It's a universe where Wolverine hails from Down Unda, where mutants glow and men chunda. Where Aunt May's boarding house is crammed full of secret, load-bearing escape tunnels and Tony Stark's donated super-computers. Possibly "on loan from Tony Stark" is also the reason The Chameleon has his own island, mansion, and swimming pool filled with alcohol (not for himself, you understand, but to trap and ignite the Sub-Mariner).

And the awards go to:

LEAST FAVOURITE EPISODE: 'Swarm'. See MOST IRRITATING NEW VILLAIN.

FAVOURITE EPISODE: 'The Origin of The Spider-Friends'. Has it all. Narrator Stan Lee. William Marshall as Iron Man. Bobby 'Iceman' Drake and Angelica 'Firestar' Jones holding handshakes uncomfortably long just to make Peter think he's feverish with chills.  And the Beetle: rocking the craziest voice in the world.

HONORABLE MENTION: 'Spidey Meets The Girl From Tomorrow'. This sweetly romantic little episode wants SO BADLY to be Silver Age DC Legion of Super-Heroes. Perhaps even more so than the subsequent episode: where the villain is clearly the Legion's cyborg enemy Tharok.

BEST SEASON: Season 2 is a mere 3 episodes long, and entirely made of origin stories, but the animation is markedly better. Spider-Friends GO FOR IT! (Actual catch-phrase.)

MOST IRRITATING NEW VILLAIN: Swarm. The 1950's-style alien insect invader smart enough to enslave a college campus but not smart enough to say anything but its own name. Over and over.

MOST IRRITATING NEW HERO: Francis "Wishing I Was Woody Allen" Byte AKA Videoman. News Flash: Playing Pac-Man and involuntarily transforming into an 8-Bit paper-thin goblin doth not a super-hero make.  Even if you do end up at the Xavier Academy despite no evidence that you are a mutant.

GREATEST BREAKOUT STAR: Ms. Lion. Angelica's Lhasa Apso, fobbed off on Aunt May the same way Videoman is fobbed off on Professor X. Ms. Lion saved the lives of her superhero pals several times over, despite being a lapdog of average intelligence. The puppy even outshines the All-Seeing Eye of the Vishanti, which in any normal dimension would prevent Sorcerer Supreme Dr. Strange from being duped. Ms. Lion, 30 years later, is a beloved member of the Pet Avengers, successfully making the transition from cartoon back to the comics that inspired it. Just like Firestar did! Except Firestar's in the actual Avengers. Not the Pet Avengers.  The Pet Avengers are PETS. Just saying.

Speaking of amazing, I gotta say I'm loving Netflix. Real life has never been so avoidable.

TV Review: Superboy, Episodes 1 & 2

1988 saw the 50th anniversary of the creation of DC Comics' famous character Superman, and (not coincidentally) the first season of "Superboy" the TV series. I recently traded away some used DVDs including Ben Affleck's 'Daredevil' when, during an enjoyable Rifftrax evening with my wife and our friends, I discovered it was not worth re-watching 'Daredevil' as much as I already have.

The upshot of which is: I traded for various possible treasures, including "Superboy" Season 1.

Maybe I'm not sure how to use the term upshot. Then again... all it has to be, to be worth my time, is better than the wretched, long-running, inexplicably popular TV series 'Smallville'.

This it achieved- six seconds into the opening credits. The lead actor is IN costume, FLYING, and by gum: he's SMILING. It's the cocky smile of a guy thinking 'hur, hur, I'm Superboy, and you're not' but you know what? That's what I'd be doing if was him. So there.

It's goofy, it's cheap-ass, and it makes 'Miami Vice' look like fine classic cinema. But I'll tell you what it has: Superboy. This is both good and bad. But nowhere near as bad as "Smallville'.

Alexander Salkind (who previously brought me the 1984 'Supergirl' movie as well as some movies normal people liked) presents this series, with character creation credit (and little else) going to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. In this incarnation, young Clark Kent is attending the Siegel Journalism School at Shuster College in Shusterville, Florida. His classmates include T.J. White (Daily Planet's Perry White's nephew, duh!) and Lana Lang (Stacey Haiduk, whom I recall fondly from equally implausible adventures on "SeaQuest DSV" Season 1). Haiduk's performance is as far above the 'Smallville' Lana as the star Rao is above doomed planet Krypton. High nerd praise.

Also along for the ride is scheming bully Lex Luthor and his crony Leo. I have never seen Luthor portrayed as a golf-sweatered preppie douche canoe before, but it kind of works for him. (Actually, the actor's terrible so far but he might be the smarmiest Luthor I've ever seen. That should count for something, right?)

Finally, John Haymes Newton as Clark Kent/Superboy. Huh. So, it's possible to look surprisingly LIKE Tom Welling, while still possessing a modicum of talent. Good on you, sir!

Also, Newton and his wife earlier this year provided the voices of Clark Kent and Lois Lane in a minute-long cartoon I just enjoyed on youtube called 'Superman Classic'. Nice!

And that's my review. Nice. Call me crazy, but I like a Nice Superboy, not some perpetual mope. These early episodes were made Super-Cheap, so kidnapping crooks, a poorly-defined cursed jewel, leisurely car chases and a typically energetic '80's dance have to suffice instead of giant robot battles (which, face it, 'Smallville' never gave us either). The music, the dialog, both stories- were pretty darn hokey. It's a poor substitute for Supes in comic or cartoon form, where he shines best in my books. 'Superboy', at least the early episodes, is a warm, brightly coloured cheeselog. But it's got moxie in spades, chums!