Voyager: Master of the Abrupt Ending?
Mar 23Even though I was pretty meh on Voyager while it was actually airing, there are certain elements of the show that I’ve developed a strange affection for as the years have gone on. Like, the B’Elanna/Tom ‘ship kinda gives me the warm fuzzies now, particularly whenever I see Roxann D. or Robert Mc pop up as a director or producer on serialized television. I can’t totally explain it, but there it is.
It’s enough to make me wonder if I should give the show itself another shot, particularly now that we’re not being inundated with technobabble-laced, franchise-approved sci-fi every week. I’ve been trying to pinpoint what my problems were when the series was on. I remember feeling like a lot of the plots were tired, that certain characters were somewhat schizophrenically drawn. And I was always a DS9 girl, so my loyalties were elsewhere at the time.
Anyway, I caught a couple of reruns on Spike the other day and…they were fine. Flashes of goodness with lots of padding. The watered down feeling was definitely still there. There was one oddity, in particular, that both eppys shared, though: a weirdly abrupt ending. The first eppy was a standard body-switching affair: mean alien trades physiques with Tom, wackiness ensues. He’s supposed to be gaining a better appreciation for his life on Voyager and his relationship with B’Elanna throughout, so the final scene has him showing her the olde thymey car holodeck program he’s been working on. It’s sweet, but B is still kind of ultra-pissed the whole time, so it’s like: she’s pissed, she’s pissed…oh, now they get in the car and start making out. The End! I felt like there was a line or a shot or something missing. I was really unclear as to how B went from being pissed to being up for some Tom Paris make-out action.
In the other ep, there’s this covert mission type of thing and Seven of Nine has a sort of religious experience. The last scene is a Seven/Janeway bit focusing on spirituality. Janeway delivers a climactic line that’s something like, “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you just had your first religious experience!” This is pretty good in the context, but then we very quickly cut away to the patented “ship gliding through space” shot and that’s it. It should be a contemplative moment, a moment that breathes. But it happens so abruptly, it almost feels like Janeway’s sort of mocking poor ol’ Seven. Weird, right? (Quick sidenote on Seven: I know there was something blatantly pander-y about her be-catsuited presence, but I always thought she was a pretty good character, grappling with some interesting issues. Props to Jeri Ryan.)
Now as a final disclaimer, I will say that I know sometimes these eppys have to get edited for time when they re-run on cable and that could account for some of the weirdness. But the commonality of the odd, abrupt endings on both of these eps really struck me. Anyway. I think I would have to re-watch a lot more of the show in order to reach a truly informed opinion as to whether I now enjoy it more, less or about the same. We’ll see if that ever happens.
I must've got Lost
Mar 21At this point I think I have just one point of confusion re: Lost…
(Mild spoilers ahead, I think, if you’re not totally caught up…)
Links…
Mar 20…to send you gently into Friday.
The Battlestar Galacticans read Letterman’s Top Ten List. In character! Sort of! Jamie Bamber’s so cute.
Alert Nerd pal Jon Collins and partner Tom have started a great new podcast called Gaymer Mafia. Lots of good discussion therein, plus the bitchin’-est tagline I’ve heard in a while (“We’re gamers. We’re gay. Roll inish and get used to it!”).
Wondering what happened to Dr. Phlox, Anya and Xena sidekick/true love Gabrielle after their respective shows ended? Check out this article I wrote! On a similar pluggish note, I actually updated my other blog yesterday. I KNOW!
EDIT: One more! Here’s a nice live blog of the Buffy reunion at this week’s Paley Fest.
Much Fangirl Love for The Guild
Mar 19OK, so yesterday, within the course of about an hour, I became a huge frakkin’ fan of The Guild. My only question is, why didn’t any of you tell me about this before?! It’s totally something I would like. Maybe you did tell me and I just wasn’t listening. I’m sorry. I was probably thinking about how Summer Glau would look with the Battle Angel Alita haircut.
Anyway, here’s a description for those of you who, like me, are slow to catch on: The Guild is a very funny geek life web serial about a gang of online gamers who interact via a World of Warcraft-esque MMORPG. It is written and produced by the adorable Felicia Day, who also stars. You might remember Felicia as Buffy Slayerette Vi, aka The One with the Hat. One of my favorite things about The Guild is Felicia’s portrayal of girl gamer Codex, who is sort of pathetic, yet still extremely easy to relate to (“So, it’s Friday night and…still jobless, yay”). The show kind of recognizes her pathetic-ness without being mean-spirited — it doesn’t make fun of her, which I think is sort of key when you’re aiming your geek-themed entertainment directly at the nerds you’re trying to portray. Also, it is just really awesome to see such a realistic portrayal of a fangirl — she’s neither caricature nor impossible-to-believe fantasy figure. And I love that she’s the central character, not the sidekick.
So go watch it, and if you like what you see, I believe you can still vote for the show in the YouTube Awards and the Yahoo Video Awards. Also, it will interest probably a lot of you to know that Felicia is part of this.
Anyway, next time, let me know about these things sooner, so I can at least pretend to know what’s up when they win big-ass awards at South by Southwest.
Keepers: Grave Robbers From Outer Space
Mar 19
I haven’t talked about games in awhile, but I’ve recently realized that of all the games I own, a few get regular play, which suggests to me that they’re something that even a non-hardcore gamer should think about picking up and having on hand.
Possibly the best – it’s relatively inexpensive, it’s self-contained and easy to store, and it’s endlessly fun – is Grave Robbers From Outer Space. I’ve played this game hundreds of times, at home and out at a friends, and it still never ceases to amuse.
Basically, it’s a card game where you’re attempting to build a horror/sci-fi movie. You use the cards in your hand to pick locations, stars, special effects, etc – each adds to the value of your movie. Meanwhile, you can send monsters out at your opponents, which can take out their cards, weakening their movie. Highest valued movie when the Last Reel card is played wins.
Now, I know that’s very simplified, but the game is built to be a giant reference/homage machine. Each card is a nod to an existing movie. Each card has quotes that are hilarious. And each card helps build something that actually feels like a legitimate, cheesy genre film.
But best of all, each card has a word on it – before the game starts, cards are used to randomly draw some of those words, which everyone mix-and-matches into a movie title. Just for fun, and a few random points at the end (you may have those words/cards in your movie at the end, which gives you bonus points), but it’s possibly the best part of the game.
For example, a friend started cataloging each title as he played with his family;
Curse of the Cyborg: Alien Grasp on the Mysterious Mausoleum
Escape from the Curse of the Forbidden Tentacle-Man Cult
Damned in Space: Story of the Carnivorous Alien Eyeball
Haunted Cauldron: Sin of the Demonic Space Mummy
And my favourite;
Sewer Violence: Carnivorous Monsters of the Secret Ocean
Yes. Sewer = Secret Ocean. Awesome!
Several additional packs were produced, each dealing with other movie genre, like Westerns and Kung-Fu flicks. On their own, they’re kind of fun. And they can be added together, but then it’s too muddied – it’s loses its sharp humor. There is an exception however – Skippy’s Revenge.
Skippy is a character, a dog, from the first pack, who is undead and back for retribution in the second pack. The Skippy pack is more sci-fi/horror, so the additional cards blend in nicely.
My only recommendation – invest in a card shuffler. They’re like ten bucks, cheap, and they are invaluable at shuffling a game that demands randomness, but has 100+ cards.
WikiWikiWhack: Grave Robbers From Outer Space.
