My favourite dumb piece of dialogue was the idiot who told Alan that they use the 2ft long electric batons on Polar Bears. Given the reach of a fully grown male Polar Bear weighing 1700lbs must be at least 5ft, that’s something I’d like to see. No, really, show me how that works.
I need to finish watching this debut. I fell asleep before the end of the pilot.
Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon
I’ve added Intelligence and Helix to my DVR series record list. For the latter this will be Syfy’s final chance to win me back. Defiance was a complete waste of time and they killed SGU prematurely.
Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon
Ninety minutes of my life I’ll never get back. I don’t need another police procedural to watch, even dressed up with some passable CG. Nor do I need overly complicated political intrigue among not just humans, but let’s throw in a few aliens and mutants. Give me some good old action adventure or military SF, and less of the contrived relationship drama.
I didn’t find out until after watching the pilot episode, and wandering why the heck the writers and director didn’t better convey the backstory, that an ebook was released last week to help viewers ‘catch up.’ The “Essential Guide” is available free in iTunes and Amazon, but not Barnes & Noble or other retailers (yet). Makes it somewhat difficult for me to acquire, since I’m boycotting both of the big A’s these days.
I may give this series a couple more episodes before pulling the plug. Syfy has a high bar to surpass, since they keep cancelling prematurely their original series (case in point: Stargate: Universe, Caprica and Alphas).
If only I could get those ninety minutes back I spent watching this movie last night. Even the respectable talents of Peter Cushing as Doctor Who could not save this film (although his character did manage to save the world from the Daleks). If the rest of the 60s era Doctor Who movies and television series overflowed with such bad acting, inept stunts, God-awful music and exceptionally fictional science, it’s a miracle Doctor Who survived to the 21st century.
Some of the ‘shocks’ for me in this movie included a girl who called the Doctor who grandfather and a woman companion who professed to be his niece. Having watched the Moffat version of Doctor Who for the last few years, I assumed the Doctor had no relatives (except for one episode involving a regenerated hand during the Tenant season). And I realized this morning that the police officer who rushed into the TARDIS thinking it was an actual police call box is the very same actor who portrayed Donna Noble‘s grandfather, Wilfred Mott (also during the David Tenant Doctor Who seasons).
I can thank my husband for finding this gem on TCM. Even though this movie was the sequel to the previous year’s Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965), I won’t be rushing over to Netflix to place it in my queue. And, thankfully, the BBC does NOT consider anything but the television series to be ‘canon’ with respect to the Doctor Who universe.
Perhaps being turned into a giant wooden doll while trapped in a dollhouse stored in a scared boy’s cabinet left Amy with some unresolved anger issues. Last week’s forgettable episode, Night Terrors, disappointed on many levels (weak story and acting on the part of the bit players). Creepy Doctor Who episode I hope to forget sooner rather than later. Thankfully, last night’s episode, The Girl Who Waited, provided excellent science fiction (including a time travel paradox unresolvable by either the Doctor or the TARDIS) and phenomenal acting from both Karen Gillan (as Amy Pond) and Arthur Darvill (as Rory Williams). While this episode doesn’t contribute much to the overall story arc for this season (the Doctor’s death), the character growth glimpsed in both Amys and Rory will knock your socks off.
A great stand-alone episode of Doctor Who I highly recommend for your viewing pleasure.
I suffered through some disappointing summer science fiction television recently (most notably “Falling Skies” on TNT). But all that is behind me now with the return of the Doctor and the best ‘bad girl’ in any time or space: River Song. Amy and Rory continue their quest to reunite with their daughter, Melody Pond, also known as River Song, although her parents are still coming to grips with their daughter’s incorrigibility, knack for mad-cap adventures and an obsession with the Doctor not of her own making.
And River, as Mels, Amy’s BFF from childhood, who coins the episodes title ‘Let’s Kill Hitler‘ when she finally meets the Doctor, after Amy and Rory destroy a wheat field with a crop-circle calling card. Holding the Doctor and the TARDIS at gunpoint, Mels corrals everyone into the TARDIS for a trip back to pre-war Berlin. Mels manages to shoot the TARDIS and forces a crash landing in Hitler’s office, interrupting a shape-shifting humanoid robot containing miniaturised humanoids has assumed the form of a Wehrmacht officer and attacked Hitler.
And it’s at this point where Hitler becomes a minor impediment to the ongoing conflict between the newly regenerated River Song and her immediate assassination attempt on the Doctor, Amy and Rory kidnapped by the miniaturized humans, and a dying Doctor. Hitler is locked in the cupboard by Rory. My husband and I laughed repeatedly on that dialogue.
The tiny robot-occupying humans reveal themselves as time-traveling Justice Department personnel who mete out punishment to infamous criminals by snatching them in the last seconds of their life and torturing them for thousands of years for their crimes. They switch gears from Hitler (they arrived too early anyway in 1938) to River Song, who has a criminal record including killing the Doctor. So now we spend the last thirty minutes of the Doctor’s life arguing whether River can be tortured for killing the Doctor when he is in fact still alive.
Best bit of lore gleaned this episode about the Silence (spoilers follow, obviously):
Robot Amy: Records Available
Doctor: Question. I’m dying. Who wants me dead?
Robot Amy: The Silence.
Doctor: What is the Silence? Why is it called that? What does it mean?
Robot Amy: The Silence is not a species. It is a religious order or movement. Their core belief is that Silence will fall when the question is asked.
Doctor: What question?
Robot Amy: The first question, the oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight.
Doctor: Yes, but what is the question?
Robot Amy: Unknown.
This episode did not have the impact of ‘A Good Man Goes to War‘ (but how could it with the big reveal of who River’s parents actually were). However, I loved it (as I do most Doctor Who episodes) for the great writing, story-telling and acting. I know where I’ll be every Saturday evening … wherever the TARDIS re-appears.
Falling Skies, the TNT summer science-fiction (vaguely and loosely associated with that genre) summer series concluded it’s first ‘season’ last night and delivered hype, hype and more hype, together with more questions than answers. I restrained myself from reviewing any of the individual episodes in the series for the last few weeks, mostly in an effort to avoid spoilers, but also because I hoped for some movement in the plot and some growth from the main characters. I would say all of the characters grew, changed and learned from their experiences, but at a more gradual rate than I had hoped.
If humanity is on the brink of extinction, would we truly throw away the few lives left on a futile attack on supremely superior alien invaders who had already effortlessly wiped out billions of us? I guess if you’re a military gung-ho sort of guy, the obvious answer is “Yes!” or more likely “Sir! Yes, Sir!” At least the science bits, where the surviving civilians learn how the ‘skitters’ communicate, how to interfere in that communication, and begin to ascertain the origins of skitters, provided the most satisfactory story elements.
The boundaries of my belief stretched to near breaking when confronted with the sub-par special effects and off-screen encounters between our surviving military and the alien invaders. While that helps the ‘bottom-line’ and saves money in production, as a viewer I feel cheated. Case in point: the attack on the school (where the 2nd Mass volunteers, those not involved in throwing away their lives by attacking the local alien entrenched HQ, and civilians) by seven (yes, only seven) mechs underwhelmed. Nor was I convinced of the human victory (insert overly melodramatic human ingenuity here) that drove the mechs to retreat.
And to leave me, after ten hours (well, more like 420 minutes) of stringing me along, without answers, for at least another ten months, frustrates and angers me. I don’t expect happy endings, especially in the dystopian SF subgenre, but I do expect some respect for my intelligence.
My husband and I watched th3 much anticipated (translated: hyped) summer science fiction series premiere of Falling Skies last night via TNT. I must have missed something the first time around, because I did not pick up from the story (what was actually aired, not what was hyped in the pre-premiere ads) what happened to the Earth. Yes, some information was revealed through observation, like the lack of any electronics as a result of the alien EMP bombardment.
A discussion I’m following at the GoodReadsScience Fiction & Fantasy Book Club likened this story to a cross between H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon. I’ve read both of those books, but I’ve only posted a review on Alas, Babylon (click here to read my review). From what I can tell from the first two hours, there is some similarity to Frank’s vision, but so far not much to Wells (at least the aliens haven’t exhibited a penchant for succumbing to an Earth virus or bacteria).
I learned this morning, when I read the discussion thread mentioned above that the alien invasion occurred six months prior to what I watched in the first two episodes. That the aliens wiped out 90 percent of the human population and for some unknown reason needs to enslave the younger members of the remaining humans (but nukes or otherwise disposes of older ones). Basically, what’s left of humanity is in survival mode, on the run and severely out-gunned.
Most of the writing was predictable and the acting mediocre (and I expected a better performance from Noah Wyle). The special effects adequately portrayed the aliens and their technology, but failed to wow me. I enjoyed seeing Dale Dye in a cameo-like appearance in the first few minutes of the first episode and I loved Colin Cunningham‘s portrayal of a post apocalyptic leader of rogue criminal gang (although with a complete breakdown of civilization, what defines a ‘criminal’ except the memory of peace and freedom held by the survivors). Quite a change in roles for Colin, from his days as an Air Force officer in the Stargate program.
I’d rate these two episodes three stars and I do plan to continue watching the series. I will hold out hope for better acting and writing, since the prospects for either in the science fiction genre is slim at best. I’ll take what I can get to wile away the summer.
Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.
