Stargate Universe - "Lost"

Spoiler Level: High

SGU continues to improve.  This episode gives another enjoyable series of flashbacks, showing us Greer's past and what lead him to join the military.  Rush continues to actually give a damn about somebody besides himself, making every effort possible to rescue the stranded team members. (Even if it does ironically end up blocking the gate and preventing the very rescue he's trying to accomplish, but hey, that's drama for you.)  And we get LOTS of Stargate travel, which is something the show has been missing.  I like the explanation that these Stargates are more primitive than the ones in the Milky Way galaxy; it explains why they have to eject steam after they close, as opposed to simply "it looks grittier." We got to see more advanced Stargates in Atlantis, now we're seeing more primitive ones on Universe.

I'm also very glad that Greer immediately took the attitude of "They thought I was dead" as opposed to "They abandoned me!"  And (again, ironically) the fact that he didn't leave with the others is what saved him.  Now he's going to wind up with a weird combination of abandonment issues and survivor's guilt.

So Destiny is now headed out of the galaxy.  Once again they've upped the stakes, and it'll be interesting to see how Scott, Eli & Chloe make it back.

As always, thanks to krissiecaps for the screen capture!

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - "Heroes on Both Sides"

Spoiler Level: High

Very, very nice.  This episode gives a very deep perspective to the entire war.  We've always known that Palpatine was playing both sides of the war to give rise to the Sith, but since we've always seen the story from the Republic's side, the assumption was always there that the prime motivation for the Separatists leaving the Republic was their own greed, led by the Trade Federation.

What this episode reveals puts the entire Star Wars saga in a new light-- the Separatists didn't leave the Republic out of greed, the left the Republic because they were sick of greed.  This totally explains why the Trade Federation is still a part of the Republic, and that Nute Gunray has simply gone rogue.  From the point of view of the average Separatist world, the Republic has become corrupt, manipulated by the businessmen into making sure the law always goes their way at the expense of the people.  And from what this episode showed us with the Trade Federation and Banking Clan, they're actually right.

I absolutely LOVE the Infiltator Droids.  I love the cleaning droid look, I love the combat droid look, and I love that they transform from one to the other.  Some truly awesome mecha.  Bring on the toy.

I also love the new character designs; it's nice to see Anakin finally in Jedi robes.  The battle armor makes sense while he's in the field, but not while he's on Coruscant.  I'd like it if this meant he'd actually be changing clothes depending on the situation, but since they've aged him I doubt that will happen.

And speaking of Anakain's age, a little more reading at starwars.com has made me realize that this series has never, ever been shown in chronological order.  Even the first season was jumping back and forth, and I just never noticed.  So I'd like to give a shout-out to Swashbucklingjedi, fanboyskywalker, and all the other fine folks at theforce.net message board for going to all the effort of coming up with a list to put all these episodes into chronological order.  Including the movie (and counting it as one episode), "Heroes on Both Sides" is the 55th episode aired and #54 in the known chronology to date.

At the Earth's Core

Spoiler Level: Low

I first saw this movie at a drive-in double feature around 1979.  We went to the drive-in to see Star Wars; I guess they considered this a natural pairing, since it's science fiction and stars Peter Cushing.  The drive-in ran this movie first of course, and all I remembered was a giant dinosaur with a parrot head and generally being pretty bored wishing Star Wars would start.

And if you'd asked me yesterday, I would have told you that movie had been "Journey to the Center of the Earth."

So I was flipping through Netflix tonight and I saw this in the new listings, and I immediately realized I'd been wrong all these years. My curiosity on what it was I had seen (and payed so little attention to) was thoroughly piqued.  Plus I was hoping to see a younger Peter Cushing.  I had no idea this was the movie he had made right before Star Wars!

The movie itself actually reminded me quite a bit of the early Hartnell Doctor Who stories, with Cushing playing Doctor Abner Perry (a stammering old scientist) and Doug McClure playing the running-around action hero.  Caroline Munro plays the princess of the underground kingdom, and boy is she hot.  There's a lot of guys in dinosaur costumes stomping around, and one downright hilarious scene of a monster eating a very obvious doll prop.

Oh, and the music was done by Mike Vickers, who also wrote some fantastic library music, including one of my all-time favorite pieces of 2-XL Music ever, "Central Office of Information."  None of the music in here falls into the same league, but it worked well with the material.

I can see why I didn't have any patience for it when I was 10, but being 41 on a quiet night with nowhere to be in the morning, it was quite fun.

Smallville - "Patriot"

Spoiler Level: High

This show has just gotten better and better.  They've even started handling Aquaman right!  Okay, they still call him A.C., but he's married to Mera, he's lost the surfer dude attitude ("Did Mera teach you that new vocabulary?" I love it!), and although they didn't get into his origins in detail he said Mera has shown him his true origins-- which leaves things wide open for Atlantis.  And Mera kept using his Atlantean name, Orin!  Fan-freakin'-tastic.

I also loved that he seemed to be out for protecting the seas, and was somewhat disappointed to learn that the oil rig he blew up wasn't an oil rig after all but a super-hero holding cell.  Oh well.

And Michael Hogan isn't just typecast as a somewhat off-the-rails colonel, he's Slade Wilson.  Didn't see that one coming.  He's got the eyepatch by the end and there's lots of x-rays of his skull... I wonder if his brain's been enhanced?  I don't know if they'll have time to have him come back as Deathstroke before the season ends, but I hope they get to.  It would be a shame to have such a wonderful set-up and not get to use it.  And it would be even better if Cyborg gets to be in the episode where he returns!  Maybe it could end with Cyborg taking some teen heroes under his wing and starting his own team...

The bits with Lois becoming part of the team were also very, very welcome.  It didn't even occur to me that Lois and Tess weren't aware that each other were both in on Clark's abilities.  Once again, this season takes the annoying "we're having a conversation where we both can't admit to what we know" Smallville standard and turns it into something amusing.  This final season has been a great pay-off for sitting through this show for the past 10 years.

Stargate Universe - "Human"

Spoiler Level: High

Wow, this was really good.  I dare say this is the second best SGU I've seen yet (my favorite still being "Time").

Getting to see some of Rush's past went a long way towards making him a more likable character.  It was nice to see he took the lessons he learned to heart as well.  ("I was being optimistic." "That's new for you.")  I just hope it sticks and he doesn't go back to being a selfish creep next episode.

Daniel was the perfect guest star for this episode; his losing Sha're made him the perfect counterpoint to Rush, and helped to draw Rush out.  And I noticed the 46 pattern all on my own!  I'm so proud of myself.  ^_^

This episode really gave me a lot of what I'd been wanting from this show; the characters learning to better themselves, learning more about the ship's secrets, and getting to visit an alien civilization.  (Although I absolutely hated that spider.  I hate spiders to begin with and that was the most nightmarish spider anyone could have come up with.  When they're huge like in Lord of the Rings it's easy to say it's fake and impossible.  When it's the size of a dog, it's just small enough to be believable and just big enough to scare the bajeebies out of me.  And the teeth and the hiss just put it over the top.  You know what, forget this, I'm getting chills just writing about it.  Moving on.)

I also enjoyed the cliff hanger element of Apollo, Starbuck, the Professor and Mary Ann  Scott, Greer, Eli and Chloe being stranded, and am looking forward to seeing how they get rescued.  And the ending theme is really, really growing on me.  (Man, I love watching stuff on Netflix and having end credits again!)  I walked away from this episode feeling something I never felt from an SGU before:  upbeat and, as Rush said, optimistic.

Once again, I'd like to thank krissiecaps for the screen capture!

Star Trek: Typhon Pact - Zero Sum Game by David Mack

Spoiler Level: Medium

Star Trek books are back!  After a 5 month break with nothing but reprints, the monthly paperback novels have returned!  And what better way to return than the new Typhon Pact series?

In the wake of the quadrant-wide devastation of the Borg Invasion in Star Trek: Destiny, the Tholians, Gorn, Breen, Romulans, Tzenkethi, and Kinshaya have all joined to form a new alliance: The Typhon Pact.  Forced to work together during the Borg Invasion, the six species have formalized their alliance and created a new major political power, sharing information and technology, and standing opposed to the Federation and the Klingon Empire.  Star Trek now has a new Cold War.

Each book in the Typhon Pact series is following one of the current book series; there will be a book for The Next Generation, a book for Deep Space Nine, a book for the Titan, and a book for the Aventine, which is the new slipstream powered starship captained by Ezri Dax introduced in Destiny.

Zero Sum Game is the Aventine book, but to be honest, the Aventine doesn't get to do very much in it.  This is totally a Bashir story from beginning to end, with Dax and the Aventine as supporting characters.  Bashir is picked for a special mission to infiltrate the Breen, and it's Dax's job to get him into Breen space, avoid any trouble with the Breen and the Romulans while he's performing his mission, then to extract him once he's accomplished it.  Really, this feels like a Deep Space Nine book;  the main characters being Bashir and Dax, the story starts and ends on DS9, it deals heavily with the Breen who were only seen in DS9, and guest characters were mostly from DS9 episodes.

The Breen are one of the more mysterious races; we only saw them towards the end of the Dominion War, and while we learned they were tough and are covered from head to toe, we didn't really learn much else about them.  So this book gives us the opportunity to do just that, as Bashir is immersed in Breen culture and has to learn a lot on the fly.

The story is enjoyable enough, even if it's not a gripping page-turner like Mack's previous books.  Mack creates a compelling look at the Breen's society, and how it's being affected by joining the Typhon Pact and having to work so closely with the rest of the Pact's members (in this case, the Romulans).  The parallels to the Cold War between the US and the USSR are very strong; the slipstream drive technology is causing a 24th Century arms race to erupt between the Federation and the Typhon Pact.  It mixes spy adventure (and lots of angst for poor Bashir, who's too good at being an intelligence operative for his own good) and political intrigue, and lays some good groundwork for the future of Star Trek in print.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - "Hunt for Ziro"

Spoiler Level: High

QUINLAN VOS!!!  QUINLAN VOS!!!  WOO-HOO, IT'S QUINLAN FREAKIN' VOS!!!!  ::Does happy fanboy dance around the living room::

I've been a big fan of the Dark Horse Clone Wars comics, so for Quinlan Vos to actually appear in the cartoon is freakin' AWESOME!!  You know the blue Twi'lek Jedi girl, Aayla Secura?  She was Vos's padawan, and started out in the comics too.  George Lucas liked her and put her in Episode II.  True story.  George also liked Quinlan enough to put in a reference to "Master Vos" in Episode III, but that was it.  (Which is awesome enough in itself, because I remember wishing that the Hoojibs from the Marvel Star Wars comics had got a reference in Return of the Jedi.)  Rumor has it that Quinlan is even going to be the lead in the live action Star Wars TV show, but y'know, I'll believe that when and if it happens.  But right here, right now, one of the coolest Star Wars comic book characters has made it out of the comics and on to TV!!!

Now all I need is for Shira Brie and Plif to show up, and my geeky dreams will be complete.

Now granted, they took it a little far with making him such a smart-alec, but I was very pleased with everything else. The voice casting, his Clone Wars outfit, his psychometric abilities, his being something of a rogue, everything else was perfect.

It was also cool to see Sy Snootles get such a major part. I don't much care for her speaking Standard-- I mean she's in a romance with a Hutt, why wouldn't they both just speak Huttese? But the over-use of English has always been my biggest complaint with Clone Wars, so I'm pretty used to it by now. I liked that Sy Snootles got another song as well. Mama the Hutt really made me stop and go "Woah. I didn't know Hutts could get uglier," which I'm sure was the point.  And I'll actually miss Ziro now that he's gone.

Okay, okay, I realize this is the wrong time frame for Shira Brie and probably even for Plif... but what about some other Hoojib?!?  They could do a Hoojib!!  Hey, that might even lead to a Hoojib toy!  Or... a PLUSH HOOJIB!!!

Okay, time to calm down.  That's just  crazy talk.

LOOK!  It's QUINLAN VOS!!!

Smallville - "Abandoned"

Spoiler Level: High

Wow, this show had so many cool fanboy moments I barely know where to start.  Not only do we get Lois & Clark's Lois Terri Hatcher playing Smallville's Lois Lane's mother, but we also get Supergirl Helen Slater playing Clark's mother Lara in the same episode!  And as if Granny Goodness and her Female Furies weren't enough, we get a bonus bit with Desaad and the return of Godfrey, setting up for Darkseid. (And hopefully Apokolips!)

And in another interesting twist, we discover that Tess Mercer is actually Lena Luthor.  Well, okay, Lutessa Lena Luthor.  For me, this actually felt very right, and only serves to increase her finding her place as a character, and is probably a step they should have taken from the beginning.  She was introduced as a replacement for Lex when Michael Rosenbaum left the show, her name being a tribute to Luthor's sidekick Miss Tessmacher from the movies and Luthor's bodyguard Mercy from the comics.  But it felt like they were never quite sure what to do with her;  she's a bad guy, then she might be a good guy, no she's a bad guy, she's a Checkmate agent...  now she's a former Luthor, a tortured soul abandoned by an evil family, trying to make amends for the bad things she's done in her life.  This is a very good angle with a lot of options.

And lastly, this episode inspired me to make my first Smallville LOL.

Sarah Jane Adventures - "Death of the Doctor" (Parts 1 & 2)

Spoiler Level: High

This is the story that, if you don't watch Sarah Jane Adventures, you're still going to watch if you're a Doctor Who fan.  And really, this is the one you definitely should see.

UNIT shows up on Sarah Jane's doorstep and says a group of aliens have delivered the Doctor's body, and are taking her to a special UNIT facility for his funeral.  While there, Sarah Jane gets to meet the Doctor's previous companion from UNIT, the one and only Jo Grant!  (Or Jo Jones, rather, after the events of her departure story, "The Green Death.")  It's not long until the Doctor crashes his own funeral and all the running starts!

"Death of the Doctor" works even better than the Doctor's previous guest appearance, last year's "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith."  Just like last year, the Doctor himself doesn't show up until towards the end of Episode 1, but it works a little better here because (1) Matt Smith actually gets to do more that just shout one line before the credits roll, (2) even if the Doctor himself isn't in the first 20 minutes or so, the action is all about him, so his presence is still felt, and (3) we get to see Jo right away, which is probably even more of a thrill than getting to see the Doctor.  I know I'll see Matt Smith again in December;  this is the first time I've seen Jo since she left the show in 1973, and I may never see her again!

In some ways she's the same old Jo, all enthusiasm and smiles.  And in other ways she's grown so much; like Sarah Jane, she's become the one in charge now, traipsing all over the world with her husband, their children, and their grandchildren.  (And let me just also mention here how happy I am that she and Professor Jones are still happily married!)  Jo's brought her grandson, Santiago, who fits in with Clyde and Rani wonderfully.  I didn't want the show to just drop in a new male lead to replace Luke like they did with Rani being introduced right on Maria's heels, but I have to admit, if they were going to replace him, the grandson of Jo Grant would be a great choice.

Russell T Davies excels at character pieces, and that's exactly what this is; even the bad guys motivation is an angle to feature as many memories as possible about the Doctor!  We even get some wonderful little bits of news as Sarah Jane tells Clyde and Rani what she's learned about Ian & Barbara, Ben & Polly, Tegan and Ace since they left the TARDIS!  (Ian & Barbara's especially made me smile, and Ace's made me breathe a sigh of relief I think I've been holding since I saw Mindgame Trilogy.)

Not that it's perfect; some of the special effects are surprisingly below current standards. There's a very obvious matte-painting for the UNIT headquarters, and some very obvious puppeteering for the aliens, which is a bit of a surprise considering how well the special effects have looked on every Doctor Who related program since the show's return.  I don't know if it was done "old-school" deliberately to give it more of a classic Who feel, or if the money just wasn't there, or if it just looked worse to me because I saw it on a 58" TV!  Personally, I'm going to go with the "old school" theory, at least for me.  And I actually kind of prefer puppets to CGI.

Aaaannd, since it was a very nostalgic, memory-oriented episode, it made for a great lead-in to Whofest 2010!

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - "Evil Plans"

Spoiler Level: Medium

I love droid episodes!  I could go for an entire series just on R2-D2 and C-3P0.  (But I'd settle for the original Star Wars: Droids on DVD in its original format with Stewart Copeland's original music.)

This one was chock full of droids, from classic trilogy droids (such as an 8D8 torture droid and two IG-88s) to the brand new and lovely Spa Attendant Droids SN-D1 and B0-N1!  I haven't bought any Star Wars figures in a long time, but they'd get me with just about any droid that was used in this episode.  In addition to a lot of different Astromechs, there were some cool Protocol droid repaints as well, my personal favorite being the blue one with the white stripe on his shoulder.

This one also seemed a little more obvious to me that it was a "prequel" episode, but more because I remembered that Cad Bane was involved in attacking the Senate.

As usual, the starwars.com website tends to come in handy; the episode guide there states that Anakin didn't build C-3P0 from scratch, he rebuilt him from a previous Protocol droid.  It might be a bit apologist, but hey, it works for me.