When Stargate Universe first started, I had my doubts about yet another show dealing with heroic folks hopping from planet to planet every week. The whole premise of the series seemed a little silly. The Ancients wanted to find out the answer to the question of Life, The Universe, and Everything. Only, wait a minute, didn’t they all becomes gods themselves and find all the answers already? The Syfy channel, which was once upon a network that featured science fiction programing but has lately been fond of wrestling and ghost busting, canceled Stargate Universe and let the cast find out…
Category: sci fi
Never Let Me Go
British Sci Fi never ceases to amaze me-the same people who bring us Doctor Who and Space:1999 also bring us The Prisoner and Outcasts. From the very silly to the simply baffling, British Sci Fi is never predictable. Never Let Me Go was written by Kazuo Ishiguro, best known for his love song to the serving class in The Remains of The Day. Like that film, Never Let Me Go starts out slow, and pretty much stays that way. The film opens with a little slug card telling us there were some serious advances in medicine in 1952 and that…
I Am Number Four
Shown in Theater Number 4, cute, huh? The story of a group of aliens being hunted by another group of aliens all of whom have supernatural powers and are hiding in plain sight here on Earth-while blowing up everything they run across and showing up on YouTube. It’s a pretty standard issue story and a movie only made possible by super cheap CGI. Like all setup movies, I Am Number Four is crammed full of dull and boring backstory about our super hunk alien and the nasty fish people who want to kill him. Only it’s backstory that doesn’t really…
Gray Matter by Jane Jensen
Gray Matter is a brilliant adventure game that has been about 8 years in the making. There have been production problems with this video game by the great adventure game writer Jane Jensen. Jane Jensen wrote a number of my favorite adventure games, including the Gaberial Knight games and King’s Quest VI. One of my all time favorite game quotes is from King’s Quest VI-And then you have a pizza. Hmm, maybe you had to be there. Gray Matter is the story of Sam Everett, street magician and poor goth girl, and David Styles, scarred widower and slightly mad scientist. …
The Family Guy Star Wars Trilogy
Lois (Princess Leia): Aren’t you a little fat to be a stormtrooper? Chris (Luke Skywalker): Well, stay here and rot, you stuck-up bitch! The Family Guy Star Wars stories are pretty much literal translations of the Star Wars movies. There are countless shot for shot sequences, only with a bit of nitpicking thrown in-such as the fact that Leia seems to be the only woman in the Galaxy and Yoda is pretty much a coward hiding out in his swamp. I was surprised that I got the same kind of feeling from watching these silly little cartoon parodies that I…
Most Disappointing Trailer EVER
Among the endless trailers that ran in front of Tron Legacy was one that really got my attention. It was a collection of clips from the 1969 Moon Landing spliced together with new footage showing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon. There are a few slug cards saying things like Our Greatest Achievement and Our Proudest Moment-so now I am thinking, is this one of those Hanger 18 movies where the lunar landing never happened? Then we see the astronauts run off on a secret mission and we see a crashed spaceship nearby. Ok, did some finally…
Stargate Universe Canceled by Syfy
The Syfy channel seems to be more interested in Wrestling and Paranormal BS than actual science fiction. Maybe that’s why they changed their name. The Syfy channel canceled Stargate Universe only weeks after canceling Caprica. The only shows remaining are Warehouse 13, Sanctuary, and Eureka. Tick tick tick That’s the sound of your life running out. I never liked Caprica, it was too much a show about The Matrix and too little a show about Battlestar Gallactica. But it was starting to get a little interesting, just when they axed it. I didn’t like Stargate Universe either, for similar reasons. …
Avatar Extended Edition
There was a lot I didn’t like about Avatar when I first saw it. That whole going native story take straight from A Man Called Horse and Dances With Wolves. That whole ecological story lifted from Fern Gully and Battle for Terra. Those damned robot suits stolen from Mech Warrior that look just as fake here as they did in Matrix Revolutions. And the worst name for a mineral EVER-unobtainium. But for all its countless faults, Avatar is still a damned good movie. Watching it, you forget the hokey special effects and goofy movements of the CGI giant cat people…
How To Write a Post Apocalyptic Story
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization either through nuclear war, plague, or some other general disaster. Post-apocalyptic fiction is set in a world or civilization after such a disaster. The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, or considerably later, often including the theme that the existence of pre-catastrophe civilization has been forgotten (or mythologized). –Wikipedia You start with one Main Character who has either lost everyone and everything they care about, or who soon will lose everyone and everything they…
Monsters-A Classic Non-Action Movie
Ultra low budget film about an alternate Earth where NASA accidentally brings a race of giant octopus to Mexico. The film opens with a couple of Humvees rolling into battle with a land walking octopus which appears to be several stories tall. The soldiers spend a lot of time fire machine guns at the monster, which only serve to annoy the tentacle waving beastie. They then call in Air Support and as the bombs drop we lose the picture and shift scene to. . . A bored photographer and a spoiled little rich girl with an injured arm. For the…