At Last! The Holy (Or WHO-ly Grail!)

I found a site that claims to have EVERY Doctor Who episode produced!

Click and enjoy!

I’m not sure if this site has the ones that were ‘bulk erased’ by the BBC, but I’m watching some of the Patrick Troughton episodes, including the VERY first appearance of the good Doctor and the Tardis, followed by the VERY first appearance of those mechanical mutants we love to hate, The Daleks!

While watching, It’s interesting to note how little the Tardis interior, and theme music has changed, at least until the Colin Baker years. Otherwise, a good find.

Also, I plan on continuing my review of Champions Online. I want to wait for the next patch (the current one messed some features, plus they are supposedly introducing new zones)

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Well, that’s one metatag shot to heck

NBC’s Conan Farewell: Scrubbed From The Web, Studio Torn Apart | Online | Mediaite.

Jeez, I did a lot of work getting the embed URLs for all of those Twitter Tracker segments and other materials I’ve linked to, and now NBC yanks them all.  Now my Conan O’Brien tags in the tag cloud are needless.

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Jay and Oprah Interview

Dissecting the O-Jay interview, lie by lie | TV Barn

As you all know, I’m in Conan’s camp.  Jay may have gotten some unfair squeezing out by NBC back in 2004, but he did agree to step down from the Tonight Show.

Blaming it all on Conan’s ratings is a bit unfair for two reasons: he was doing well with the key demographic, and he had an awful lead-in that was driving viewers away from NBC completely for the night.

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The one saving element of Red Dwarf USA

There was an attempt to bring the British Sci-Fi Sitcom Red Dwarf to the United States. Certainly, that should have been easy to adapt. It could have been big. Unfortunately, there was a lot of interference from the network, and the cast is relatively lifeless.

One change they made was that they not only kept Robert Llewellyn as Kryten, but they introduced him in the pilot as an official member of Red Dwarf. Sadly, this negates his hilarious background as the caretaker for three hot women who’ve survived an accident, but when the Dwarfers arrive they find three skeletons that Kryten has been maintaining for eons. However, his altered history makes for the one truly hilarious moment in the US pilot. (It’s at the very end of this clip.)

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the Darker Seid of Life

By all means we at Monitor Duty should have written dozens of histories and recaps and essays about DC Comics’ vile Kirby demon, the evil New God Darkseid.  By now there should be hundreds of references and odes of love.  If kicked we might see it happen in the future, but I do not care to do that now.

Recently when I should have been working I googled for Grant Morrison interviews about Darkseid.  To tell you the truth I do not think that Mr. Morrison has anything profound  or unusual to say about the character but I like the way he puts together words and descriptions.   He puts together ideas that are not necessarily new or great in ways that are interesting and entertaining.  Honestly that is a good thing.  It does not matter whether the ideas are his or not.  His 52 co-writers claim that his virtue is not his creativity but his fearlessness.  He will go where his fellows will not and that seems like a strength to me (and a burden to editors and marketing staff).

Grant Morrison successfully delivers upon the marketing and communication of old ideas mixed together in way that editors would not let less experienced writers attempt.  That is the only reason I bother looking for his interviews.  I like his words; Ienjoy good poetry.  I do not care to give him credit for new meanings or new ideas.

Here is a quick Darkseid link dump.  It might be nice if, in the future, Monitor Duty has the greatest and most authoritative Darkseid link directory.  Let us leave that for the future.

• Marc Singer, who is not the Beastmaster, writes a defense of Darkseid against the Howling Curmudgeon, in that he declares why the character is a good one, but insists the biggest injury upon the character is its overuse.  They agree on the character’s three best stories but alos there are moe good stories with the character.  The most profound note is that the character is used best in stories where he seems to die a permanent death.  I think that the character is not made better by having no inner conflict, but to have the character have an inner conflict is to write him out of character.  Most good characters have inner struggles; to an extent it easier to see the super-villain in this case as a plot device.  In this light most villains are plot devices more than characters.  I can think of exceptions like Lex Luthor (depending on the writer, of course) and Doctor Doom, both of whom are self-realized as Darkseid is.  Yet Luthor (again depending on the writer) has a character arc involving his own jealousy, need for attention, his place in the world, and possibly friendship with Superman.  Doom struggles with vanity above all.  Darkseid has not issues.  He merely is.  He will never grow and he will never learn.  He will simply act, conquer, enslave, and at the end of the story arc in question he will die.  Occasionally he gets trapped in the Source Wall or something.
• A lot of this comes from a September calling for Darkseid essays.  Who has the time?  The point is that Darkseid “is a person” and I cannot say it is wrong because I sadly have read less Kirby New Gods material than I should, due to cost constraints.  As it is, what I declared in the point above is that recently Darkseid is a more a plot device, an abstract menace (as Galactus has almost always been) because while he may have been a person with a personality most writers simply treat him as an abstract personification of a dark ethos.
• The best response is this: by Keith Giffen in his Ambush Bug mini-series.
• Andrew Hickey insists that Darkseid’s desire to seize control of all life, the universe, and the entirety of creation and existence is borne out of fear of death.  Mr. Miracle is the logical counterpoint and the arch-enemy of Darkseid because as an escapological archetype he is positioned outside of the constraints of control.  Yet Scott Free himself is still not a direct and successful contrast because Darkseid name him and set his purpose.  That is Mr. Hickey’s point anyway and I am not certain I buy into it.  This plays all into ideas of “degrees of freedom” but as a Liberal Democrat (in the UK political sense) Mr Hickey’s views about what is acceptable as a definition or execution, application of freedom is suspect.
• The first Darkseid story I ever read was not the entire story but the final chapter of a JLA/JSA team-up story.  As was the the fashion at the time the occasional/formal meeting between the League and the Society finds it self linked to a third super-team, in this instance the New Gods.  I remember Justice League of American #184 (and here is the cover) because the New Gods were not only definitely super-heroes in this incarnation (and there is nothing wrong with that) but Darkseid has a personality, he is a villain with motivations and relationships.  In point of fact the bulk of the story is about relationships as well as a rise to power.  Upon his return from his most recent death in the New Gods strip from Adventure Comics, Darkseid punishes the Injustice Society for accosting his son Orion, clearly with a view of propreitry and seeing Orion as a creature, a prince, someone whose fate is more tied to Darkseid’s whim than mere encounters with bad guys.  Orion’s group consists of a Leaguer and a Society member.  All the split-groups  (I love how they follow the Gardner Fox tradition) consist of such a configuration.  For isntance Batman’s group has Mr. Miracle and the Huntress because both are versions of him in the different worlds of the different teams.  At this point each team resides in a different dimension of the DC Comics storytelling.   Because Darkseid has his relationship with the New Gods he seeks to teleport Apokolips to the spot where Earth-2 resides, destroying Earth-2 and thus landing his domain inside a universe where there would be no heroes, and no heroic New Gods.
• OAFE assesses/contrasts two Darkseid action figures making his size and sculpt major emphasis.  The Mattel version, which is the one really looked at, comes with a Mother Box as his accessory, and despite being smaller than the DC Direct Darkseid figure, is apparently just better.  Of course there is a brief history asserting that Darkseid only recently became a Superman villain despite that his first appearance was in a Superman comic.  He also discusses Grant Morrison’s formulation of the Anti-Life Equation.

I think there is something to be said that properly written the villain is a character but this applies to every character.  It is also important to note that the ending of the story as well as how often the character appears has serious impact for story quality.

(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

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And that’s the way it was…

Walter Cronkite, Reporter, Anchorman, Legend, has passed away
Also known as the most trusted man in America, he founded and set the standard for reporting the news which very few have matched.

Rest in peace Mr. Cronkite

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Farewell, Mr. Jefferson

Mr. Jefferson has ended his 50-year childhood.

Here is perhaps the best obituary I’ve seen on him.

Mark Steyn, a great obituarist, talked with Hugh Hewitt about Michael Jackson showing us the price paid for our exploitation of child stars, noting how “Lindsay Lohan is about 22 now. She’s got etched into her face that kind of hardness of a 48 year old woman sitting in a sports bar somewhere in some broken-down loser town in upstate New York who’s been around the town once too often. “

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Don’t Skeet The Tweet!

Why would a bird turn into popcorn?

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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More fun with Conan (O’Brien, not Barbarian)

Yes, Spinal Tap’s new album has just dropped:

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Tonight Show Twitter Tracker

Conan’s new Tonight Show looks to be one of the funniest things in years. It looks like they’re launching a lot of new material instead of rehashing all of his Late Night stuff. (I swear to God, every time I ever tuned in to Conan’s late Night he’d be talking to a photograph with moving lips on a big screen.)

Their new set looks cool:

I love their Twitter Tracker, introduced on 6/2:

From 6/9: You can’t beat the tweet!

Of course, some old bits are worth resurrecting.

(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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Where are the Star Trek crews now?

AOL has a piece on the Star Trek casts then and now.

Levar Burton is podcasting and you can follow him on Twitter? I don’t know if that’s cool or sad.

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Crazy week

Big Lost finale was tonight.  I just knew they’d leave us hanging on something for another year.

SPOILERS

One odd bit.  The Comicon Season 6 teaser video  of Dr. Chang acknowledging President Bush and the Internet in 1977 did not get addressed this year.  In fact, I don’t even see how it can have happened in Season 6, given that the person recording the video is dead but Dr. Chang didn’t acknowledge the truth about time travel until after that person had died.

Here is that video:

Oh, weird! I just hopped on Seth Is Lost to find that video…and Seth just answered the very question I’d posed!

Apparently budget problems caused them to change their storyline for Faraday. So…how can it be, exactly, that these writers have thought out everything from beginning to finale but then they can completely change their plans?

(2 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

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It’s a Wonderful Life lost ending

Presented by William Shatner

Saturday Night Live – “Its a Wonderful Life” Lost Ending from Season 12

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this is hilarious…

I wish I saw it years ago.

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My local Star Trek Museum!

I live over on the east side of Rochester, Minnesota. One fine day I was out walking when I noticed an odd blue sign in the distance. It was fuzzy and I could barely make it out…

The heck?  I’ve never noticed that sign before.  Now, it’s probably been there all along, and I’ve been passing it for years.  But how could I not have noticed that that’s the USS Enterprise on the sign!

I was still several blocks away from the sign.  It was a sunny day and I was squinting in the brightness.  I quickened my pace to get to this sign and find out what it was.  I mean, how could there be something Star Trek-related in my own neighborhood all this time and I haven’t known about it!?

My mind was racing. Could Rochester be the birthplace of Gene Roddenberry, maybe?  Couldn’t be anything to do with Shatner or Doohan, they’re Canadians.  Takei was from California or thereabouts, since he was in an internment camp during WWII.  That leaves a number of major castmembers.

Maybe Enterprise designer Matt Jefferies was born here!  That would explain why they have this schematic-looking overhead view of the Enterprise on the sign.

I was getting closer.  Now it was just across the street.

Perhaps, instead of a Trek birthplace, there was a little Star Trek museum?  This is a residential area, so maybe some Trek collector let his collecting get out of control and take over his house.  He collected action figures, bought authentic props, built dozens of models, changed all his decor to be Trek-related, and he turned his entire basement into a replica of the set, and it finally reached a point where it was either put it all into storage or turn his house into the Star Trek Museum of Rochester.  That would be pretty cool.

I crossed the street.  Now I could definitely see the details of the sign.  That most certainly is the Enterprise against the blue background!

Oh, wait.

It’s Jesus.

Well…Star Trek is practically a religion, so I wasn’t too far off.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Cat species found on Mars!

Read the rest of this entry »

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Ron Silver, RIP

Actor Ron Silver has passed away at the age of 62 after a two-year battle with esophageal cancer.

Ron had many dramatic roles, but my favorite was always his playing the bad guy (as Ron Silver, an actor who was also the head of N.A.S.A.) on Ben Stiller’s aborted TV Series “Heat Vision and Jack.”

I was also fond of Lifepod, a TV-movie he directed and starred in.  It was a science-fiction reworking of Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.

As an activist, Ron swung wildly from being a major liberal in Hollywood to speaking at the Republican convention in 2004, a changeover which happened after September 11th.  That can’t have been an enjoyable transformation in Tinsel Town, yet Ron seldom complained.

I have tremendous respect for the man, and I’m saddened by his passing.  RIP, Ron.

Update: Breitbart’s obit for his friend.

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All-Superheroes Cable Channel?

Sadly, not an announcement. Just a dream. But it’s a good dream, and Sean Taylor has the line-up all ready to go.

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Review: “X-Files: I Want To Believe”

Perhaps, had I caught the new X-Files movie after a long drought of no entertainment, I may have liked it. Maybe. The fact that a few days ago I dragged out my dust-covered “Season Two” box set couldn’t have helped. To make things worse, earlier today we got to one of the best episodes ever: “Humbug”, featuring Vincent Schiavelli. A hilariously creepy episode, there is nary a wasted moment, and almost every line is witty and well-structured.

This X-Files movie has a number of things against it. The biggest is that the series jumped the shark long before it had an episode called “Jump The Shark” (the one where the Lone Gunmen get killed off). Chris Carter wanted to end the show when it felt right to do so, but it was one of the only hits on the Fox Network and so the show limped along. Mulder left, John Dogget was Scully’s new partner, Scully was now the believer in phenomena, the mythology got over-wrought and made no sense, Scully fell in love with Mulder and had his baby, the Lone Gunmen were killed off, and Mulder went into hiding from the F.B.I. and Scully quit.

The entire setup that made the X-Files the X-Files is ruined. Neither of them are F.B.I. agents and they don’t have a file cabinet full of spookiness to investigate! There’s no Cigarette Smoking Man, no Lone Gunmen, no abducted sister. How do you make a movie that follows this?

The answer is: You don’t make a movie. Unfortunately, they made one. Good thing for them, they didn’t blow a lot of money doing it.

In this new movie, Mulder and Scully are living together and Scully is a doctor for a Catholic hospital. The F.B.I. is trying to find a kidnapped agent with the help of a psychic, and they call Mulder in to assist in determining whether the psychic is on the level or is sending them on a wild goose chase.

On the plus side, this movie does what the first film, “Fight the Future,” should have done: a movie-length, movie-production values version of their better stand-alone mystery episodes instead of an installment in their on-going complex alien mythology.

Sadly, this is not one of the better episodes. It’s very boring, much of it feels like it’s been done before, there isn’t really anything mysterious and the only exciting scene is a standard foot-chase in the middle of a street with cars braking suddenly. Much of the movie is about Scully having a crisis of faith (what, again?). Meanwhile, Scully and Mulder’s relationship is terribly ambiguous…and unconvincing. These two are absolutely not in love. What have they been doing all these years, anyway? I can understand their not getting married due to Mulder being a fugitive, but they don’t act like anyone I know in a relationship. It’s as if they’ve been together for seven years but not talking about anything that would bring them closer as people. They’re more like roommates who’ve had a kid together. Their kissing scenes are downright awkward. (Remember when the BIG thing about “Fight the Future” was that Mulder and Scully might kiss?)

The movie really is hurt by the slavish devotion to continuing the changes from the end of the series. It should have found a better way to put Mulder and Scully back into their old roles, if only because most of the people in the audience will not have watched the lousy Mulder-less years and may be baffled.

Don’t bother. Go watch the box sets of the early years.

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The most popular Halloween costume

When Erik and I were at Wizard World Chicago this year, we saw about 30 “Heath Ledger Jokers” walking around. That made this all the funnier:

I’m just posting it here because it turns out Erik didn’t see it. Enjoy, buddy!

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