Perfect Day

Gorgeous perfect weather in Chicago. Went to the Field Museum, and nerded out at all the dinos. Hard to believe these are the first skeletons I have ever seen in person. I walked back from the Museum along the marina. Just perfect. Listened to all the foreign couples argue in their languages. I went to a comics shop on Madison to pick up Buffy - because I do not let Buffy go for anything, not even a vacation - and overheard an employee there insist everyone preorder copies of The Plan, because she has it from Eddie Olmos himself that if they get 150,000 preorders, they'll make more movies. I asked her what sort of movies they might be - given how BSG is, you know, over - and she wasn't too sure.

Went to Quake Toys up in Lincoln Square, which is literally a vintage toy mecca. Jesus Christ, I literally had to pull the old jaw up off the floor. I walked down one side of the store, filled up my hands, and then put it all back when I got to the other:



It's kind of lonely, but it's very refreshing to be away from the machine of work. I'm clearing my head and doing lots of reading and thinking. Even a little writing. Tomorrow Northwestern.

Almost decided to go to the Cubs game tonight - glad I didn't. 4th inning and it's 12-1. Good grief...

Forever Ducky

RIP John Hughes.

I think this says everything.

Put Some Ice On It

The 5,000 mile wide impact zone from the comet that hit Jupiter on Sunday. The resulting explosion would have completely destroyed the surface of the Earth.

Space Is The Place

On the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, turns out something decided to reach out and touch Jupiter:

Ouch.

Just glad we don't get smacked as often as Jupiter does. Just goes to show you, space is the place.

POTF Quest: July

My year long quest to complete my vintage Star Wars collection with the very rare, and very expensive figures from 1985 continues. July's score: R2-D2 with pop up light saber! For $63, he's a huge steal. R2 is in amazing, having been in an attic since 1985 and out of daylight (sunlight/smoke will yellow all R2's). He is traditionally one of the more expensive figures in this run, and I expected to pay a $100 or more. I have yet to on any of these figures - in fact I have spent an average of $28 on the figures I've got so far.

Joss + Jo Chen = Online Buffy Love

A special treat for the holiday weekend: an online Buffy comic from Joss Whedon and cover wizard Jo Chen. It features probably the funniest thing in the Buffy-verse in the last year (years?) and is very much appreciated after a couple months of "meh" with the comic book. Speaking of which, the newest issue is out this week, and apparently is a return to form.

So The Same Guys That Wrote Star Trek...

This pretty much sums up my reaction to Transformers 2. I did think it was a better movie than the first one, and for around a half an hour or so, it actually told a story. But the 'twins' were insufferable and insulting, and the film makes no sense from the get go: what teenage guy is going to give up his super hot girlfriend and 2009 transforming robot Camaro to go to college?

NOBODY, that's who.

KHANNNNNNNN!!!!

I agree whole heartedly with this article at io9, which takes the stance that Khan in Star Trek 2.0's inevitable sequel is a bad idea. The impulse is understandable - it's the same one that led Chris Nolan to the Joker in The Dark Knight. Up the stakes, and go for the throat with the franchise's most recognizable villian. Khan is famous for many reasons, but the Khan everyone thinks of won't be the Khan we'd see. He'd be the one from the Original Series. And while that may be of interest, what Star Trek needs is to embrace its newness. Forget the old - don't warm over previous stories ala Ultimate Marvel style. At least not yet. Follow through on the amazing potential of the new movie. What comes of all those homeless Vulcans? What sense is there in logic when your entire civilization has been destroyed?

I look forward to what the writers do. If they go with Khan, I know it will be new and fresh, but will it be what the story needs?

Vintage Make

I've been meaning to update my monthly quest to complete my vintage Star Wars collection for a while now - so I've included the results from May and June here. My goal has been to buy one a month, holding out for the best condition and the best price. I've been stunned at the number of collections that are being unloaded right now, and the decline in price of almost all of these. The economy has really taken a toll on the market for these. People need money, so they're unloading them, but people don't have money, so their value suffers.

In May I got the Death Star Gunner. In June, I really made out: I nabbed Romba, Endor Luke and General Lando all for a $100 - my threshold for any one figure, and the typical price of any one figure. All are in excellent condition.



I still need:

R2 Pop Up Lightsaber
Stormtrooper Luke
A-Wing Pilot
Barada
Ev-9D9
Amanaman
Imperial Dignitary
Warok
Yakface

Brannigan's Law

All good things...

My Next Destination

Check out all the Jawa love!

Do All My Quantum Selves Like Land of the Lost?

Tour the multiverse.

Saw Land of the Lost today. It was better than I expected (my expectations were only to see Anna Friel on the fat Ultra Screen - check) and I recommend it. There is literally nothing at all to say about it other than it's fun.

Buffy - Joss = ?

More on Joss-less Buffy at io9. They make some good points - the Buffy comic isn't hitting the heights it was, currently Joss is hit or miss (Dollhouse, Serenity - yeah, I said it) and they try and make the case Buffy is bigger than Joss. Buffy is certainly strong enough to survive any medium - she has gone from movies, to TV, to comics - and the continunity may one day require a reboot, but Buffy isn't Star Trek or Batman with decades of dead weight. She's young and still vivid in the imaginations of her fans (would a Star Trek reboot with diferent actors have worked in 1979?).

I don't think this will get anywhere. The reaction seems fierce enough to rival Republican opposition to... well, everything. It seems crass, disrespectful, and short sighted. And it may be what it takes to get Joss on board with a Buffy movie.

The Worst Idea EVER

Click here to see how a movie company will initiate the apocalypse. This is a little stupefying. If the backlash doesn't kill it, the mobs with their torches and pitchforks and Angel puppet dolls will.

Killing Your Babies

I have a draft of what I have been calling The Big Damn Epic on this blog and another that is dated from 1998. I have proto-versions of it that date to 1995, and characters/concepts that go back to 1992, and probably earlier. This particular novel has been with me for so long, it's hard to remember a time without it. It has never worked. The seeds of a good story were planted before the ground was fertile enough for them, and I have spent over a decade waiting for the soil to mature. I can't say it has now, but fruit hanging too long on the vine goes rotten. Last year I started a last ditch effort to rescue the novel before it went bad; that attempt, like every annual one going back a decade, ultimately failed.

I work all day long in front of a computer, writing, and so when I get home my energy and fire is usually tapped. I had reached a very long dry spot before Elizabeth, and was afraid I had run completely dry. That kind of fear will keep you up at night, and it did. Elizabeth proved to me that I had still had the fire, still had something left in the well, but it didn't give me the direction I needed. Did I go forward with the idea for the sequel? Another novel? Or do I go back to the Big Damn Epic, and try and raise this thing from the dead one last time?

The last failed draft came out of that confusion. Before I even finished it, I knew it was wrong. "Wandering Star" - I can say the title now, because it is no longer the title - seemed to be an endless struggle for me. I wanted to finish it, to move on with my creative life and so I started fantasizing - as one might with a spouse one can no longer stand - about murdering my heroine. Sojourner occupies a place in my heart about as large as a first-love does. I have been with her longer than I have any one in a real relationship; but she had become stifiling. Suffocating.

(What follows I guess must be SPOILERS for future readers - yes, all two of you:)

I started to dream about killing her at the end of the novel - instantly disintegrating my grandiose plans for an epic trilogy, the second part already in the can - but divorcing myself from the long term committment of those books wasn't enough. I had to be rid of this novel, the unfinishable book. One day, it just occured to me: just kill her. Right in the middle of the book, right in the midst of the quest, right as she started to cement.

And it freed the novel. It freed me. It unlocked all the threads I could never weave - suddenly agendas and actions and themes came into relief. The entire architecture of the novel coalesced. Since then, that well has found new depth and I have a queue of novels waiting to be written. The reason for this long post is I've just finished the chapter in which she dies, and I am 212 pages into a novel I am finally excited to write for the first time in a decade. The thread of the book hasn't changed - it's remarkably similar to what it was in 1998 - but the details have evolved considerably, and in ways I never could have imagined.

Terminated

SPOILERS follow

I had semi-big expectations for Terminator Salvation, not because I'm a huge fan of the franchise - not really - but because of the pedigree. Christian Bale as John Connor leading the resistance after Judgement Day? Say no more. Jonathan Nolan (who wrote The Dark Knight) co-writing the screenplay? Yes. Bryce Dallas Howard? Yes. McG? Um... ok, so McG gives you pause. I had a wait and see attitude with him and to his credit, he goes for a look and achieves it. It's just not the look anyone expected or necessarily wanted. Or one that's original.

The future in this movie looks like one that someone who just saw Blade Runner or Mad Max might think would be cool. It's not the dark, cratered landscape suggested in the earlier films, a landscape literally crawling with machines; in fact, the surface is remarkably untended by SkyNet, to the degree that the Resistance somehow manages an fleet of workable A-10 Warthogs and Ospreys that they can park out in a traditional airfield without fear of being nuked to kingdom come by SkyNet. They can fly them without too much fear of being shot down, because SkyNet, despite its name, seems to not have any air superiority. SkyNet in fact has a minimal presence in the world outside of its base in San Fransisco, where it conveniently decides to centrally locate its resources. The entire ethos of the film is wrong. This is the same issue I had the X-Men films; it's hard to take the underdog plight of mutants seriously when they live in a tricked out mansion and fly around in a supersonic jet. The X-Men worked best when they were on the run, living off scraps. The future Kyle Reese described in the original 1984 film is not reflected here.

John Connor is another huge let down. Christian Bale spends most of his time on screen - very little of it - shouting into a microphone. He seems bored. You don't engage with the character at all, and the others, his wife Kate, Barnes - they're just there. The main character is a man named Marcus. Marcus first appears in a misguided prologue as a death row inmate about to be executed. Helena Bonham Carter shows up with some papers for him to donate his organs to Cyberdyne systems - SkyNet's authors - and they share some horrible dialogue and acting and he dies.

Marcus shows up again in 2018, and becomes the focal point of the story. We know he's a machine before he does, but the Frankenstein element has enormous potential. None of which materializes. He runs into Kyle Reese, very well played by Anton Yelchin, also in Star Trek, runs into a Resistance fighter named Blair who has no integrity and no common sense about her, and eventually into the man himself. All of it goes nowhere. They eventually invade SkyNet Central because Kyle Reese has been captured, and John Connor needs to make sure he's born because he's so damned important. Not even his wife seems to think so. SkyNet knows who Kyle is - and rather than simply kill him right then and there, creates an elaborate plan to trap Connor and kill them both. Somehow Marcus fits into this as the only way Connor could be duped, all of its horrifically explained in a EARTH STOPPING scene from Helena - I mean, SkyNet - which rivals the Architect scene from The Matrix as the most stupefying exposition dump in film history.

There are some nice moments - seeing 1984 Arnold for a minute, in what has to be the best human CGI ever (remember The Scorpion King? It was bad!) - but mostly the film fails the promise of the first two. The real issue is who the main character is. That was the failure of the third one, this one and likely every film to come after. The main character is not the T-800. It's not John Connor, who has turned out to be the least interesting protagonist in this genre. It's not Kyle Reese. It's Sarah Connor. She has been the focal point of the series from the get-go, and her absence virtually undid the third one. Her presence in this one, as a ghostly voice, only reinforces the fact that the series has lost its bearings. The original film, like Aliens, was about a woman standing up in the world of men and their machines. The series gradually shifted to John Connor, necessarily maybe, but in doing so it lost its heart. Now, this film can't have Sarah because she's gone and its decades after. This film shouldn't be. It serves no purpose - it ends with only the promise there will be more. That may not be a good thing.

On Third Thought

After my third viewing of Star Trek - I have also seen Terminator, review forthcoming (check out Ben's take on it at his blog) - I think I finally figured out why the only soft spot in the movie - the big bad - doesn't work. The entire movie hinges on the idea that an alternate reality has been created by Nero's travel back through time. He substantially alters the course of history, first with the encounter with the USS Kelvin, and then the destruction of Vulcan.

Nero is one upset Romulan because a star exploded and destroyed his planet. The Vulcans - led by Spock - agreed to help by creating a black hole to swallow the star, but arrived too late. In the movie Nero takes this out on Spock and Vulcan by destroying Vulcan with the same black hole stuff. The problem is, Nero wants to insure his wife and child will survive, but that star is still going to go nova in 129 years time; his first priority should be destroying that. From his point of view, doing so would save Romulus and erase the future that has left him alone and stranded in the past; what should have happened is that Nero destroys the star - I'm pretty sure it's the same star he emerges at in the opening scene - and he doesn't blink out of existence. All is not right; he still exists, and so the future - his future - still does. He can't undo anything. Then, his crusade becomes one of torching the earth. If there will be no future for his wife, there won't be one for anybody.

Top 10 Rules of Time Travel

Because of Star Trek, Terminator, and the fact it's all I've been going on about forever with my buds:

Debate.

By Dawn's Early Light

Land of the Jawas

So, last week or so I mentioned I scored a Regal Jawa. He has now safely arrived and taken his rightful place in my collection. And it occured to me I've never really shown my collection here, so here are some photos:

(click to make bigger)

The lil' guy:


My Jawas:


My vintage figure collection (missing 13 of the last 17):


I will try and take some pics of my modern collection and better ones of the vintage collection later.

Shades, Part 2

Motherless Frankenstein

Mother's Day, yo!

I Have Been And Always Shall Be Your Friend

SPOILERS follow

Everyone who knows me knows I'm a Star Wars baby, but during that long period between Jedi and 96/97 when Episode I finally started to become a reality, I was still a space geek annd Star Trek was where I got my fix. I saw the movies, the TOS reruns in the afternoons after school, but it wasn't until The Next Generation that I really got into it. I love astronomy and space ships, so Star Trek more than Star Wars appeals to the Dude-I-Want-To-Be-An-Astronaut side of me (plus there's actual characters). Star Trek also inspired me as a writer; I still remember reading interviews with Michael Piller in the original Star Trek Communicator about the process of writing. He spoke sometimes about 'zen writing', an idea that non-outline writers like me love because things seem to naturally fall into place. You discover something in your story as you write it, and you come away not only with the joy of discovery, but the feeling that really, that's how it always was.

That's how this new film feels.

When it was first announced J.J. Abrahms was taking over the franchise, I had my doubts. Not about him; I love just about everything he does on TV. I didn't know that Star Trek had any life left in it, especially after a good decade or more of aimless banality. The only place to go was back to the past, and the risks there are obvious. I can say now that not only did he succeed my wildest expectations, he absolutely obliterated them. The film essentially goes back to Kirk and Spock - back to their very births - and starts over fresh. However, the it's not a rehash of what's gone before because history has been changed by a Romulan named Nero who is whisked back in time. Nero is tattooed and angry and takes it out on a spaceship that happens to have Kirk's dad on it. Kirk's dad dies, and it's the first of MANY things that zig where they should have zagged before. The film manages to honor the past - Leonard Nimoy appears in a scene with the new Kirk, Chris Pine (instant star) that recalls so many good moments from the past, and erases so many of the bad - and also chart a new path. The film clearly establishes that Nero's actions have created a new timeline - an alternate one - and things will not proceed normally.

This all seems obtuse to a non Trekkie but really, it's an ounce of the film. The rest of it is a hilarious, blistering action romp that is more like Raiders or a New Hope than any other Trek film. The movie consciously echoes A New Hope in several ways - the farm boy hero; the looking at the suns like looking at the Enterprise moment; the destruction of a planet by a big ass spaceship; the bar scene - and none of them seem to try to shrink the ethos of Trek to that of Wars. Trek can be what it always has been - optimistic, outward looking, fun - and still be wall to wall adventure. This is a great achievement for Abhrams and a joy for Trek fans who may have feared that there never would be any more 23rd century joy.

The Great:

They built the Enterprise in Iowa. In Riverside. For a boy from Iowa who dreamed of space growing up, that is the single coolest thing in the history of cool. They still never would have gotten it off the ground though.

The casting is perfect. Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg - Jesus, Simon Pegg - and most of all Karl Urban as Bones not only pay tribute to actors no one thought replaceable, they prove the characters are not.

Zoe Saldana.

The Kobyashi Maru. "I... understand."

The upside down skyscrapers on Vulcan.

The pipeworks engineering section of the Enterprise. Hey, remember when it was a cardboard room with a chair?

"I have been and always shall be your friend."

The emergence of the Enterprise from Titan.

The Enterprise. Still love the 'A' version the most, but this thing is gorgeous.

The jump to the drill.

The set of the Narada - the most unique set I've seen in a long time.

The music - outstanding, big and epic.

The sound effects are simultaneously original and throwbacks, and generally iconic. The Enterprise always sounded like an ocean liner going by before; now it sounds like a supersonic train so fast you barely hear it at all.

Go see this. Several times. Like I will.

Space Operatics

io9 gives the top 10 rules of space opera in honor of Star Trek (one more day!) so go check them out. Since I am writing my own little space opera presently, I'd thought I check what I got their list:

1. Have a giant object in space.

Check.

2. Set the action in motion by plunging us into the middle of an extremely complicated astropolitical regime change.

Right with you until regime change. My astropolitical is complicated, though.

3. A scrappy group of humans should be part of a rebellion that's hidden on a cool-looking moon or tricked-out asteroid.

Not doing so good here. Though my good guys do live underground...

4. There must be an enormous mothership (which must be referred to as a mothership or maybe a base ship), and it must be attacked by a bunch of tiny fighter ships.

This is so cliche, I avoid it altogether.

5. Always fill your spaceships and intergalactic ports with random background aliens and weird-faced creatures.

Naturally.

6. Your heroes should always revisit the sites of old battles, the locations of terrible accidents, and the regions of space where their people were wiped from the face of the universe. But only if they don't want to.

My heroes sift through the ash of the universe. It's kind of the book.

7. If there is a male bad guy, he should have a ripped body or amazing weapons. If there is a female bad guy, she should have a high, sparkly collar or a sidekick named something like Tigerman.

Um... no. I have a guy and a girl as the baddies, though. They are neither ripped or sparkly. But they rip and make sparkles of other people.

8. There should be at least three types of weapon and three types of spaceship, each of which will be given a name that is used repeatedly.

There are three types of spaceships, because spaceships are awesome.

9. There should be a captain. If there is not a captain, there should be a special agent. If there is not a special agent, there should be a cadet with a future. If there is no cadet with a future, there should be a mercenary with a dark past.

There is someone with a dark past.

10. Somebody wise should predict something, but nobody will pay attention or be able to understand the prediction.

Dude, it's a space opera!

There's A Naked Man In Our Barn

SPOILERS

I went with Ben yesterday to see Wolverine: X-Men Origins, or whatever it's called. It was utterly lifeless. Hugh Jackman is always a treat, but here he's disserviced by a script that has him tricked into getting an operation that makes him indestructible, because - follow with me now - he wouldn't otherwise volunteer for it. So his boss makes his brother kill his girlfriend so he'll volunteer, but he didn't really kill her because she was playing him the whole time to get him to volunteer. And his brother, who is killing everyone else, didn't kill the girlfriend of his baby brother who he loves and protects because... why?

The direction is very poor. Gavin Hood never really knows where to put the camera, unless it's ten feet over Jackman's head so he can scream when someone's dead. Also, why is it that no one knows how to film a car chase anymore? The helicopter/bike thing you've seen in the previews is okay, except most of it is filmed in front of a green screen (watch Death Proof to see that is still possible to film a car chase practically). The green screen is really distracting, because the effects are equally poor - the CGI in these X-Men movies never seems to be on par with other big movies, and this one is particularly bad. The final sequence on top of a nuclear reactor (yeah) seems like it came from a video game about ten years ago. The rendering on most everything (including a wonky cameo by Patrick Stewart) looks cheap. That five different effects houses - none of them ILM - contributed to this movie seems to say everything. The fight scenes are weak. Wolverine spends a lot of time screaming. They completely shaft Deadpool, and Gambit, the only bright spot in the movie, is hardly there.

Moving on.

A Holy Grail

I could not pass it up.

I am a lifelong Star Wars fan. Of all the Star Wars goodness I enjoy, I enjoy Jawas the most. I tend to buy all things Jawa and if they're old things Jawa - and rare - I have had them on a wishlist for years now. # 1 on that list is the incredibly hard to come by Regal plush Jawa only available in Canada in 1978. This thing is nearly mythic, and thanks to the auction above, I am now the proud owner of a complete (!) Regal Jawa for a extraordinarily fair price.

The last Jawa left is the even more rare and mythic vinyl cape Jawa. This thing runs in the thousands of dollars and will not be had by me for some time (if ever). In some ways the Regal Jawa is more of a catch - I actually had a couple vinyl jawas as a kid, and happily lost them in the course of playing with them. Beyond that, there isn't a piece left on my Jawa list. Well, there are Jawa things - I still don't have a Sandcrawler. But I have my 12 back carded '78 Jawa. My Lego Jawa (WTF this thing is so hard to get). My Japanese plush giant Jawa.

But I still have several vintage Star figures I never owned - all from the rare 1985 series that few people saw - and I am knocking off those, one at a time.

They're Not Dolls... They're Action Figures!

By far the most insightful take on Dollhouse yet.

This is a difficult, uneven show that in the last few weeks has really been exploiting its potential - limitless, it now seems - and if Fox allows it to go on, there may be rewards in them there hills. I would hate to see it go because I am endlessly fascinated by Dichen Lachman, who displays a dexterity in her acting that really makes up for the lack of any real regular character.

I See You...

Getting warmer...

A Rare And Final Sight

Click on the pic to see twin shuttles gracing the pads at the Cape.

One is going to fix Hubble - yay! - and the other is there in the event of a rescue is needed. The sober reality is that if a rescue is needed - Hubble orbits so high and away from the space station that if something goes wrong, there's no quick fix - the shuttle program will be over.

As it is, it's a wonderful sight to behold.

I Gotta Wear Shades

(Almost a month since my last post - clearly I am not blog devoted.)

I found this article at io9 (which you should be reading every day if you're a geek like me) which I enjoyed since it collides things I think about time and again" high/low culture, science/fiction.

The article basically asks why some sci-fi - Trek, Who, Star Wars - is classed as fluffy entertainment and why some sci-fi - BSG - is not. It boils it down to optimisim/pessimisim. Trek looks on the future as something bright and shiny and everyone's happy, so it's not that big a deal and BSG looks on it with dread and fear. I think this is an oversimplification. Trek, in all its incarnations , dealt with serious themes in bold ways. What really got my computer going was that it leads to the real root of the problem: the emphasis of science itself in the writing will lead you inevitably down the road to 'seriousness.'

Star Wars does not obey any science and so - largely - operates in the dude this is so awesome no way arena. Trek swerves in and out of science and in and out of the realms of pop/art. BSG dealt with - until the very end at least - scientific questions. The advancement of artifical intelligence and its impact on our humanity. Hundreds of moral/ethical questions branch off from that, and it followed more or less all of them. Science itself - AI, cloning, the use of nuclear energy, space travel - have always provided us as much in the way of cautionary tales as they do flights of fancy. Science also increasingly casts our future - and our present - in shadow. Science enabled us to impact our environment, and now enables us to understand what is happening to it. We know, from science, that not just our time on earth is temporary, but everything we know is. Science tells us how the universe began, and it also tells us how it will end. Science spells out the finite everywhere we look - Earth will either bake in an expanding sun or be dead anyway by the time it happens, because of tectonic death. The Milky Way will collide with Andromeda and cease to exist. Galaxies and stars as a whole will cease to exist some tens of trillions of years from now as they exhaust all their stellar fuel.

Any fiction that obeys science - or at least holds to its tenents - will have to deal with the shade science casts on our existence at some point. Some criticized the end of BSG because it was a 'happy' ending out of step with its traditional darkness. One thing science also does is enjoy the impossible. Every day we learn something we thought once couldn't be or never was; if we look now and despair on the fate of all things, we also have to realize that what we know amounts to a drop in a bucket that can't possibly be measured. Science is as much discovery as it is elegy, and so is its fiction.

Daybreak Part 2

Battlestar Galactica is dead. Long live Battlestar.

MASSIVE spoliers follow.

The last episode of BSG came with trepidation. I hate to see it go. BSG has been and will always be one of the great television shows. We live in the golden age of television - the best writing in the English language occurs on TV right now - and BSG is one of the crown jewels of this era. Great writing, great drama, demands an ending and in so many cases TV denies that. Pushing Daisies is a recent example of promise denied. BSG deserved an ending and though I'm sad to see it go, I don't begrudge it at all. The great thing about BSG is that for all its drama and moral and philosophical complexity, you have these geek moments where you're shouting "Yeah!" at the screen. My all time favorite was when Galactica jumped into the atmosphere of New Caprica; I was out of my seat. The finale provided a couple of those same moments - the Galactica ramming into the colony, and the hair-raising discovery of Earth. Our earth. More on that in a sec. The effects on BSG have been cinema worthy since the start and tonight cemented that. The raid on the colony was outstanding, groundbreaking work for TV. It had to have cost a fortune.

The ending has perfect moments. Perfect endings, for some. Baltar has a perfect ending. I almost lost it when he did, as he said, "I know something about being a farmer." Perfect. To that end, Six has a good ending as well. Laura's end has been forecast for so long that it was slightly anti-climactic, but the last moment with her and Adama was beauftiul. The going off into the sunset end of Galactica, and the entire fleet was beautiful - and the call back to the original series music was a nice touch - but a part of me did want to see the Galactica go down fighting. A lot of times through out the show we got to moments that seemed like the end of the line, and then the ship and crew survived. This really did seem like the end, and but for the need to have the ship ferry the crew at last to Earth, itself a poetic ending, I wouldn't have minded to see her go down with the colony.

Earth.

I suspected something along these lines with Earth a couple episodes after the discovery of 'Earth' at the beginning of this season. We never saw the continents, after all, and never went back. Tonight, we saw Earth in all her familiar glory, Africa in full view at the outset. I loved the idea of the song that the Final Five and Kara heard being cooridinates. I thought maybe that was the case after last week's episode, when she began assigning them numbers, but to be honest as Friday got closer, I started to fear Ron Moore would not go back to Earth at all. Is Lucy Lawless still sitting there, waiting for Cavil? Does anyone care?

Ok. Now for the 'but.'

150,000 years later - COMPLETELY demystifies the entire series. I'm sorry. The entire series was of gods and men; the ending brings it down to street level, literally. The ominous shots of robots here in the present day was so blatant (as was the Ron Moore cameo) it was unbecoming of a show that has prided itself on subtlety and complexity of thought. It threw me. Did we need to see this? We know - now - that we, us, are the children of Hera. The question of whether or not the cycle is being repeated would have immediately come to mind anyhow and would have been some mind candy to chew on as we settle in with our DVD's and memories.

Kara is a ghost. A ghost that has DNA and blood to establish she wasn't a Cylon at least. An angel? An avenging angel certainly. It seems the writers simply didn't know what to do with her. That's borne out, I think, by this honest answer from Ron Moore himself:

We debated back and forth in the writers room for a while about giving more definition, giving her more clarity and saying “This is definitively what she is.” And we started to say, the more you try to sort of outline and give voice to and put a name on it, the less interesting it became, and we just decided this was the most interesting way to go out, with her just disappearing and [you’re] wondering just exactly what she was.

It's not that I needed to know what she was - the suggestion that she is other than Cylon or human is mystical and poetic and almost enough, but Kara represents an agency even beyond the music and the Head Six or Head Baltar. She and the Viper she came back in are - were - physical, tangential representations of living things now dead. Kara's resurrection mirrors, obviously, Christ's, and I like Maureen Ryan's thoughts about her being the Holy Ghost of the Trinity. It makes sense, if this were a show steeped in Catholic mythology. It's not, and there should have been more - not more explanation, but a more definitive representation of her otherness. Rather than just simply vanish, I think it would have been more interesting to see Kara either evolve, or revert back - perhaps to the moment she perished - ala 2001.

All in all, it was an excellent ending to an excellent series and I am sure I will be wrapping my head around it for a long time to come.

Natasha Richardson 1963-2009

Besides knowing she was Liam Neeson's wife, I knew Natasha Richardson from The Handmaiden's Tale. I saw it when it first came out, so I must have been 14 or so. What drew me to it was the poster - more her than the poster warning me to see it while I could - and for the 15 minutes or so that was my attention span at that time, I was very fond of her. It is very sad and shocking to hear of her passing at such a young age.

Meghan McCain Is Not Fat

The Republicans have officially nothing to talk about.

FYI: Also not fat: Jennifer Love Hewitt and Kelly Clarkson.

Daybreak Part 1

It seems fitting, in an odd way, that Battlestar Galactica is ending at about the same time as the Bush administration. The show - one of my personal favorites, most certainly one of the best ever produced for television - is the most successful commentary on the last 8 years in modern American art. From its uncertain beginnings in 2003 as a reboot of a television show from the 70's, BSG has been a running, real time reflection of the moral and philosophical complexities of our time. Our time goes on, but BSG's time has come. I can't help but wonder if it's too soon.

I've always felt that the show rushed through its stories. The Pegasus arc, specifically with Admiral Cain, felt truncated, as did the New Caprica arc. The occupation could have been an entire season - the writers blitzed through it so quickly they jumped an entire year forward in time at the end of season 2. And tonight's episode, the first part of the two part finale, felt very trucated; no doubt it will all feel more whole once viewed together, but the extended flashblack to Caprica - that gorgeous blue, that perfect white made think for a moment, Earth? - seems a bookend to something we will see next Friday, and sort of hangs there right now. Lee and the pigeon, for example, seemed completely random (unless he was the drunk that killed Laura's entire family...) as did Anders hot tub scene. I'm dying to know what Adama's one hour tour is, though. And Laura. The woman swims in tragedy. As if her cancer wasn't enough, the destruction of the colonies, her entire family is killed before the attack. Why show us this now? It seems all of the characters - Lee, Laura, Baltar (in a wonderful scene with his father, we see the essence of the man - a shit who hits his own father for fucking up his date), Kara - endure personal armageddon before the real one.

Next week promises more apocalypse. The Galactica, falling apart and on her last leg, is going to rescue Hera from the Cylon colony which just happens to orbit a black hole. No doubt the Galactica will not survive. Laura, either. Is the colony going down the hole? Are all of them, the way Kara dived into the swirl in season 3, and died? But came back as something other, after finding Earth?

In a show of so many amazing moments, there are still so many questions:

Will we find out who or what Kara is?

Will we find out who or what Hera is, and the meaning of the Opera House?

Is humanity doomed to endless wander, slowly dying off into oblivion, or is there a home for them, somewhere? Is there an earth yet out there? Why did we never see the continents of 'Earth' in the season opener? Was that Jupiter we saw last week?

Is head Six real or is she Memorex?

I can't wait, and yet, I'd be happy if it took just a little longer to get here.

Seek Immediate Medical Attention

If you are still watching "The Clone Wars," the most schizo show on TV. As a lifelong Star Wars fan, I was in no matter what, but it's like riding in a small boat in high seas; up, down and all around. Some weeks you're treated to glimpses of the Star Wars that could have been; episodes that have scope and depth and heart the prequels simply never found. Some weeks you're treated to more of the same blah the prequels offered up. And some weeks, like this week's penultimate episode, you get a little of both. As the last part of the recent 'Ryloth' trilogy where the Jedi and clones are liberating an entire planet ala WWII Europe, this week should have pulled out all the stops. It features great direction, lots of action - most of it cinema worthy - and EPICALLY stupid storytelling.

The bad guys are holding the capitol city, Minas Tirith - I mean, the capitol city - and Mace Windu and crew have to get it. Except the only way to get into it is over a bridge that's kind of like a force field. But they came in a space ship. And spent the entire first part of the trilogy establishing air superiority. And you have lots of ships. Because you landed in them. So... what does it matter if they have a bridge they can turn on and off? Ok. So they're guarding the city with bombers. So shoot them down. And you do - but still, that bridge. Hmm.

Friday night is the most schizo night on TV. You have Clone Wars, which is a crap shoot. Then you have Battlestar - see my post on that later - which is Battlestar, and casts a shadow over everything on TV. You have Dollhouse, also a crapshoot. And if you're up late and a geek, you probably see that BSG is followed by Stargate SG-1, the anti-BSG. And you wonder - do I look at the sci-fi glass as half full? Or half empty? Oh, wait. There's an ad on right for Seabeast. "That weren't no shark!" Yeah. Half empty.

Plot For New Star Trek Movie Revealed

Bay Area activist has returned from the 24th century to prevent big buildings:



He forgets they are that high because by then, the ice caps have metled and the water level is so much higher.

Down With The Sickness

At home with the flu and nothing to do, and also this had to happen. The other blog got away from me. Between work and writing and life I never had the energy to keep it up - which doesn't bode well for this one - but here's to something new. I will keep the other one going for now, or until I figure what this one is. So, anyways. I'm stuck at home with no voice. I am not without diversions: U2's new album, which is magnificent. I am going to see them on tour this year, in September in Chicago. I've never seen them live in all my years of fandom (since "The Unforgettable Fire") and I am dedicated to resolving that unresolved corner of my life.

I'm also working, with stone mason like speed, on the next novel. One great idea that caught my idea is the concept of a personal worldbuilding wiki. I don't have my own server, but if I did, I imagine I would be all over this. I develop things pretty organically. That tends to mean lots of revision, lots of "oh, that should have been in the first book" but it's the only way I know to work.

I have plans for a site built around "The Book of Elizabeth", when it debuts later this year. I have some pretty neat ideas, and I'm looking forward to it.