Television
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Thoughts On Buck Rogers Season 2
by I was eight the year Buck Rogers came to television. I remember it fondly. Season 2 began just after my tenth birthday. A bit of an extra gap for the time period, but it looks like it appeared as a mid-season replacement. I’ve been doing a middle-age rewatch of the show for a while, and as I type this, I have two episodes left in the second season. I’ll probably finish it by the end of the long weekend, and I have thoughts. Season 1 is filled with 1970s cheesy SF goodness. Action, sound effects, bright colours, disco music whenever they could get away with it, and the beginnings…
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Competing Visions of the Future
by On Saturday, I wrote about the genre TV I’m watching now and pointed out on (V) that holds up really well. My brain is still running over that ground, I guess, and I want to point out two of those series that don’t hold up as well, but for different reasons. Buck Rogers and Space 1999. For the first, Buck Rogers is a late-disco era vision of the 25th century. It’s bright and colourful, both in terms of sets and costumes. If those costumes are tight or revealing in ways that don’t necessarily make sense for the parts the actors are supposed to be playing, it’s easy to remember…
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V: The Final Battle (Not a Review)
by I can’t binge watch things like most people do. Half a dozen episode in an afternoon? I top out at about three and then need to either switch to something else or take a long break. Long as in days. Half a dozen episodes of one thing in a week is binging for me. As a consequence, I’m usually working my way slowly through eight or ten different things with some split between current and nostalgia that usually favours nostalgia at least a little. In alphabetical order, here’s the current list: The Avengers (1961) S04 Buck Rogers (1979) S01 Dr. Who (Classic) S12 Gravity Falls (2012) S02 Space 1999…
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Star Trek Sunday: Chronological vs Series Order
by I have a general preference for series order when it comes to watching Star Trek. Or I would if I were starting from the beginning for a re-watch at this point. At this point in my life, I’m more likely to take each series as a separate entity. My daughter and I are closing in on the final season of DS9 and I’m preparing to do an Enterprise watch of my own. More on that another day. Most people seem to suggest that if you’re going to start a watch of the entire universe, you go in series order. That looks something like: TOS TAS TOS Movies TNG TNG…
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Star Trek Sunday: Lower Decks Revisited
by Way back in August, I posted about my initial reaction to Lower Decks. The verdict at that point was that it was my favourite new iteration of Trek since Enterprise ended. We were only two episodes in at that point, but the first season is over now and it’s been renewed for a second season. I hope it gets more. Why? I’m going to steal most of the paragraph I wrote last time: Lower Decks is about friendship, loyalty, compassion, understanding, finding your way, coming of age, and expanding what it means to be a Starfleet officer and a sentient being, human or otherwise. The character interactions come back…
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Darkmok and Jalad at Tanagra
by Or, TNG at 33. Last Monday, Star Trek: The Next Generation turned 33. A couple of days later, my favourite episode turned 29. “Darmok”, the second episode of the 5th season of TNG, first aired on 30 September 1991. The Children of Tama, an alien species with an alien language, want to establish a dialogue with the Federation, and the Universal Translator seems to have no problem with the language, but it also gives the Enterprise crew what seems like gibberish. At least until they figure out that the Tamarians speak in metaphor and allegory. Of course, without the common cultural references, talking to each other is still hit…
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What I’m Watching Lately
by Back in the first few weeks of the COVID shutdown, back when I still thought I’d be back at work in 8-10 weeks, I did a couple of blog posts about old TV SF, covering my childhood, my teen years, and my 20s. There was nostalgia, there was wistfulness, there was a stirring of the idea to go and visit some of these old friends again. Well, I’ve recently spent some time tracking down some of those old friends, along with discovering a couple of new ones. Unsurprisingly, I’m a little scattered and eclectic about it. I’ve managed to OD on binge-watching things in the past (and my definition…
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Star Trek Day, Officially
by While some of us in Canada may have celebrated on Sunday, myself included, as far as CBS in particular is concerned (and since they own Star Trek, their opinion is paramount, pun intended), the date of the anniversary of the first airing in the US is the official Star Trek Day. So, once again, happy Star Trek Day, everyone! I’m a little surprised at how much they have set up for streaming specifically for this date considering how well recent anniversaries have been marked so far as I could tell, but I’m happier this time. The planned stream includes: The pilot episode of every series (although in a weird…
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Happy Star Trek Day, Everyone!
by What’s that you say? I’m two days early? Well, yes. Officially, I suppose. But from a Canadian perspective, most of the world is two days late. Common wisdom suggests that the first broadcast of Star Trek was the 8th of September, 1966 on NBC in the United States. Therefore, September 8th is Star Trek day and we should all celebrate. I agree with the last four words in that sentence, but the rest… not as much. The actual first broadcast of the show happened two days earlier and in Canada. Never heard this before? Well, I promise I’m not just making it up and I offer you the first…
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Entertainment Preferences
by A while back, I noted that I have certain reading preferences when it comes to genre. I identified what I consider to be the eleven basic genres and then broke out where I spend most of my reading time and where I didn’t (and why). There are some differences when it comes to my non-reading entertainment. The same basic genres exist, but then there are extra things that find there way into entertainment that I wouldn’t call fiction when we’re talking about that. (Hmm. I never did get to non-fiction reading, did I? Another time.) Once again in alphabetical order, but this time putting the breakdown in the list…