Category Entertainment

Dec 9 2011

Gift Ideas For Fans That Won’t Break Your Bank

The deadline for buying a decent gift is approaching fast. OK you’re on a budget, or the secret Santa list gave you someone you’re not close to but know that he or she is a genre fan. Sure you’d love to gift some kind of toiletry gift set or a desk calendar, but let’s be real here. He or she will really geek out for that super expensive Batman statue by Sideshow Collectibles or anything along that vein. But we’re on a budget here or you just don’t feel like breaking your bank and there’s no way you can reasonably afford to get the ultimate Jurassic Park trilogy Blu Ray gift set that comes with a T-Rex statue.

However, it’s not too hard to get by with gifts costing $25 or less. Here are some ideas. Ornaments Hallmark puts out the best ornaments and have catered to genre fans. This year has many offerings, but forget the spaceships, they cost more than $25 and aren’t very interesting except for die-hard collectors. (They consist of a little seen Romulan ship from the original Star Trek and a second version of Boba Fett’s Slave I ship.). So that leaves the character ornaments. Unfortunately the Star Trek ornaments aren’t too interesting (generic looking Spock ornaments, one that is out of the price range), while the Star Wars stuff aside from a LEGO Darth Vader seems repetitious (yet another Yoda ornament, and a costly Han Solo/Greedo diorama that doesn’t adequately answer the question of who shot first) Hallmark put out some reasonably priced cool stuff that could be collectible. First up is a Cylon ornament from the original Battlestar Galactica that features that infamous electronic speech pattern from the robots. There’s also the Nautilus submarine from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, a cute Gizmo wearing a Santa hat from Gremlins (already selling out so run out and get it, there are more fans of that film than you think), and a good selection of super hero figures. The Spider-Man and Batman ornaments are kind of bland but there are ornaments of Green Lantern and Thor that look good and the original Batmobile is a classic. If the person on your list is more of an animation fan, there are dozens of ornaments priced under $25 featuring characters from Disney, Pixar, Peanuts, Dreamworks, and the Rankin-Bass holiday classics like Rudolph and Frosty. If Hallmark doesn’t suit you, many companies put out their own ornaments themed after popular genre characters. Take Target or the Disney Store for example, they put out ornaments that are just as good as Hallmark. Blu Rays/DVDs This is easy, find out what his or her favorite film and see if they have it in their collection. If the film is not there, then voila! Run over to Best Buy or Wal-Mart and pick up the DVD or Blu Ray. DVDs priced from $5 and up are everywhere, while Blu Rays are starting to come down in price. If they just bought a Blu Ray player and need to upgrade then that’s a no-brainer. Practically all of this year’s genre offerings are available including Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, Super 8, Thor, Battle: Los Angeles, and even obscure fare like Another Earth. Statues and Figures It’s true that most statues are mega expensive, but a quick look at sites like eBay and Amazon will yield very good results. For instance if you’re not too discriminating just look at the clearances, Amazon has this bust of Venom from Spider-Man 3 for under $10. And if you’re intended is into anime then the sky’s the limit with the available choices. You also can’t fail with bobblehead figures and even action figures. DC Direct and Marvel put out some terrific well-detailed and affordable figures that don’t have to be played with, they look great just plastered up in their display boxes. Though that kind of defeats the purpose of a toy, then again these are intended for grownups, um, never mind. Books and Collections Good choices here, find out what author they enjoy and get them the latest work. Amazon had Stephen King’s 11/22/63 for under $20 and his other stuff on paperback for half that price. It’s best to get nice, thick novels that take a while to read. Better yet, if they have tablets, then get the digital versions, the prices are great. The same goes for comics. Graphic novels and collections of story arcs are perfect and usually affordable. A nifty trend tailor made for gifting are the Vault books. Part memorabilia collection, part coffee table book, they include looks at Star Trek, Batman, Spider-Man and more. Usually they’re called for example Alien Vault and are sealed. They run a bit high on price but if you have time, you can find some for the $25 range with some careful shopping. Gift Cards The ultimate fall back and in many ways the best gift. Get your in-law or co-worker or buddy who has everything a gift card from any merchant and let them run wild. Even the larger comic book stores will sell their own gift certificates. Just be a little creative in the wrapping to make the gift more memorable. No matter what, it is pretty easy to get a gift for a genre fan. Annette DeForester

Dec 3 2011

The Science Channel: A Successor To Syfy


Just look at the current schedules of both The Science Channel and Syfy. True most of the programs on The Science Channel are science based like How They Do That but any casual viewer will notice shows geared to sci-fi fans. The most recent example is a two-hour show called Trek Nation where Gene Roddenberry’s son examines the cultural impact that Star Trek has made. Other shows of note include Michio Kaku’s fascinating Sci-Fi Science, Mars Rising that explores how to get to the red planet and Prophets Of Science Fiction. Add to that the channel is also airing reruns of Firefly and ReGenesis.

Clearly there is an effort by the channel’s programmers to attract more serious sci-fi fans.

Now look at what plays on Syfy, a channel supposedly devoted to science fiction. What is found are wrestling shows and reality shows about a bunch of guys running around in the dark looking for ghosts. This is an exaggeration of course. Every Saturday night Syfy runs sic-Fi movies. Unfortunately they’re these zero budget craptaculars about giant mutant animals and disasters and feature actors whose fame are rapidly fading.

It seems that once the channel canceled more serious minded shows like Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, and Stargate: Universe it gave up. Most of their current actual genre shows are formulaic, lightweight affairs that aren’t engaging. Does anyone honestly think that Warehouse 13 will be highly regarded years from now?

There was a time that the average fan could look forward to running home and finding an oasis in the television wasteland.The channel actually catered to genre fans with fondly remembered programs like Farscape, MST3K and they commissioned new episodes of canceled shows like Sliders. Syfy or rather Sci-Fi, as it was called in it’s heyday, even had documentaries, reruns of classic shows, and making-of specials.

Well all of that is gone now. Sure they have those terrific Twilight Zone marathons and an occasional movie but it’s clear the channel is a shadow of it’s old self. It is evident that the channel will transition away from it’s original programming just like MTV. Syfy should just hurry up and do this. The way things are any real fan can find quality programming all over cable. BBC America has a Saturday night block devoted to genre programs like Doctor Who and there is The Science Channel.

With shows like Firefly on it’s schedule it won’t be long before more sci-fi shows will find a home in the channel. Don’t be surprised if Fringe or one of the Star Treks winds up on The Science Channel. And seriously they will nicely complement the thought-provoking shows like Prophets Of Science Fiction that examines the lives, inspirations and impact of giants like H.G. Wells, Philip K. Dick, and Mary Shelly. It’s very easy to imagine Michio Kaku hosting one of these sci-fi shows as he does with Firefly. This viewer cannot wait for that moment.

Lewis T. Grove

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Nov 29 2011

The Occupy Movement As Predicted By Star Trek

All the incarnations of Star Trek have been noted for helping to inspire new advances in technology like tablets, cell phones (which is funny since the original show’s communicators look so outdated to what we have today), scanners and so on. And Star Trek has paved the way for new ways of how we view ourselves, notably in terms of racial and sexual equality. But one thing lately has popped up that may be overlooked given all the tensions going on in this country lately.

Namely the entire Occupy insert a city or neighborhood Movement. No matter where one stands on the Movement, it has to be agreed that this phenomenon could easily foment and lead to ominous developments. This was seen in the two-part Star Trek: Deep Space NIne story “Past Tense” where Captain Ben Sisko and members of his crew are trapped in the early 21st century and are caught up in the so-called Bell Riots. Taking place in San Francisco in 2024, the Starfleet personnel are mistaken for being unemployed and disenfranchised and are placed in a ghetto-like “Sanctuary District” and inadvertantly change history.

As Ben Sisko and his crew try to correct the timeline by being active participants in the Bell Riots (chiefly by Ben Sisko assuming the identity of Gabriel Bell who was killed while defending him; Bell would become an important figure in helping to bring about social justice in the U.S.) the plight of the District residents are shown. For the most part, many of them have been unemployed for a long time and are unable to get any kind of support from the government. Just look at the latest news stories to get an idea of what the Bell Riots participants were protesting. It’s easy to see how today’s current protests, which are already becoming violent, could lead to those opposing the Occupy Movement for a severe government crackdown in order to restore order.

This isn’t meant to support one side or another, it’s just to point out how relevant Star Trek remains to this day and not just in terms of cool gadgets. Hopefully these Bell Riots that involved Ben Sisko and company won’t come to pass. Then the one thing the “Past Tense” episodes will get correct is the prediction that the Yankees won the ’99 World Series.

Lewis T. Grove

Nov 23 2011

Lost With Terra Nova

After much delay, Terra Nova finally premiered earlier this fall on FOX. Reasons for the delay were reportedly due to production problems such as tweaking the special effects. Despite Steven Spielberg being behind the show, a lot of people fretted over the delays especially when Brannon Braga (who many blame for Star Trek’s decline) came onboard as a show runner. What most overlook is that other sci-fi TV veterans are also involved like Firefly’s Jose Molina and Trek writer/producer Rene Echevarria.

With all these talents behind the scenes you have to wonder why Terra Nova isn’t a can’t-miss show. Many parts of it come off as tepid combinations of seaQuest and tired Star Trek plots (and that means the banal Next Generation and Voyager episodes that earned Braga his reputation). Yet there is potential in this program. It’s not downright awful and I’m still watching (which is something that could not be said for other new genre offerings like Person of Interest and Once Upon A Time, I couldn’t even get past the half hour mark on those pilots).

Here’s the premise as seen in the pilot episode “Genesis;” by 2149 Earth is an ecological disaster, overpopulated, polluted and pretty grim. But humanity’s salvation lies in the distant past. A way was found to time travel back 85 million years into an alternate Earth (and sidestepping any time paradox questions), so a select few are chosen whether by lottery or needed skill to go back in time and live in a  new colony called Terra Nova. Enter the Shannon family. In the future, family sizes are regulated to just two children and the Shannons  are caught harboring a third child, which leads to the father Jim (played by Jason O’Mara) to being  jailed. Years later, the rest of the family is chosen to make a pilgrimage to Terra Nova. His wife Elizabeth (played by Shelly Conn) helps break Jim out of jail and all five of them escape into the past to start over.

Probably part of the problem with the show is that the place they arrive in is a bit too perfect. It tries to come off as a bit rugged but the colony looks like a beefed up farmer’s market meshed with a timeshare resort with everyone walking around casually. The Shannons are part of the what’s called the Tenth Pilgrimage, meaning that nine other waves of colonists have arrived and settled into the place. It would have been more interesting to have seen the struggles of the early colonists, seeing death, hardships,  and dinosaurs. Yep. For a show that takes place in prehistoric times, dinosaurs appear far and few in this show, which is surprising when you consider that each episode costs about $4 million and has a longer than usual post production. If you look at Primeval, which has plenty of scenes with dinosaurs per show, you have to wonder where did Terra Nova’s budget go to? Sure, it has some nice special fx, esp. when showing futuristic tablets and graphics but the dinosaurs are nowhere near the level seen in the Jurassic Park films. They might as well have set the show during a more recent time period, the premise would still be viable.

So without the constant drudgery of trying to set up a colony, the show is reduced to banal plot lines. One episode called “The Runaway” dealt with a little girl that sought asylum with Terra Nova. She was part of a group of renegade, thuggish colonists that broke away from the colony in the Sixth Pilgrimage and are known as the Sixers. Interesting concept for recurring villains, but they come off as rejects from a bad Mad Max rip-off with Hollywood camouflage face painting and rags. It was pretty obvious that the girl was  a plant sent by the Sixers to infiltrate the colony. But the episode did reveal some mysteries such as the fact that some people from the future are unhappy with the leader of Terra Nova (Commander Nathaniel Taylor,  well played by Stephen Lang, think of a nicer version of the character he portrayed in Avatar) and want him removed and part of the mission of the Sixers is to do this. There are very small indications that there is more to Terra Nova than viewers are shown such as the story behind Taylor’s missing, estranged son. But so little time is spent on them.

Instead we get generic plot lines and really stupid family and teenage drama that belongs on The CW network. Haven’t the producers seen other genre shows with idiotic teenagers and known how loathed the y were? Here we have Jim’s mopey son Josh (Landon Liboiron) wasting screen time about how miserable he is without his girlfriend from the future. So he takes a job with a shady bar owner, that the parents are completely unaware of until lately (even from the first episode it was shown the parents were irresponsible by not keeping tabs on him), and strikes up a bargain with the leader of the Sixers to bring his sweetie pie through the time portal. How dumb is this guy? Then we’re tortured with scenes of the Shannons’ middle daughter making lovely eyes with the oh-so cute security guard. Speaking of security, Jim Shannon saved Taylor’s life in the pilot, earning him a job as the colony’s cop, so why isn’t he wearing a uniform like the other security personnel?

Here are some other episode plots, in “What Remains” the main cast gets stricken with a virus that causes amnesia. Actually it was better than it sounds, like a dull episode of Star Trek: Enterprise that recycled that plot from older Trek shows. That’s because of the interactions between O’Mara and Conn (who happens to be the only one who can cure the disease: “roll eyes now”). “Bylaw” concerned THE FIRST MURDER EVER COMMITTED ON TERRA NOVA! Wow with all the problems with the Sixers it’s hard to believe that there hasn’t been any violent incidents and casualties before this episode. And if memory recalls, Taylor was nearly assassinated in the pilot. So why no brouhaha over that? BTW the mystery was dull and by the book.

A recent episode “Nightfall” was fairly good (an EMP from an exploding meteor knocks out the colony’s electronics leaving them defenseless) then again there were some head-scratching moments. For instance, they go on about how their weapons are now useless, well don’t they have the skills to at least make crude spears and traps? And another thing they have to manufacture chips to operate most of Terra Nova which is without any means of protection. So why is priority given to make a chip just to operate a bio bed for one patient? What about the security of the entire colony? Wouldn’t that take precedent?

Terra Nova has some interesting nuggets. Unfortunately TPTB don’t concentrate on them. Yet there is enough going on to keep my attention and watching, which may be for naught. All thirteen episodes in this season are in the can, so there is little that can be done to improve the show at this point until filming the second season. But I get the feeling this one may be extinct before long.

José Soto

Nov 16 2011

Top Ten Butterfly Effects

One theme that runs through many time travel stories is that of the Butterfly Effect. Most famously demonstrated in Ray Bradbury’s short story “A Sound of Thunder” where time travelers go back to prehistoric times on a dinosaur safari and inadvertently change the future by carelessly killing a butterfly in the past. The most recent example of the Butterfly Effect is in Stephen King’s newest literary release 11/22/63; in that book the assassination of John F. Kennedy is prevented resulting in a radically altered timeline.

This list will cover some of the best Butterfly Effects presented on several media that I’ve seen or read (sorry haven’t read Lest Darkness Fall or The Time Ships yet), and are based on Effects directly due to time travel and the amount of time spent exploring those altered worlds.

10. “Storm Front, Part I & II” from Star Trek: Enterprise; the fourth season opener concluded the maligned and confusing temporal cold war storyline. Captain Archer and the Enterprise crew are trapped on Earth during World War II in a timeline altered by aliens. This resulted in the Nazis being more technologically advanced and occupying parts of the U.S.

9. “Turn Left” from Doctor Who; the episode examines what would have happened if Companion Donna Noble never met the Doctor. It’s a grim timeline that features the deaths of the Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith, Torchwood and Britain under martial law.

8. “Year Of Hell, Part I & II” from Star Trek: Voyager; the crew of the lost starship Voyager stumble upon an obsessed alien intent on using time as a weapon in his region of space then as a means to restore his wife after utilizing the weapon erases her from history. The Voyager crew literally go through hell as they try to track down the alien and restore the timeline. It was so well done many fans grumbled when things went back to normal!

7. Flashpoint; The DC Comics mini-series and its spin-offs has the Flash preventing his mother’s death while time traveling, which forever alters the DC Universe. First the Flash is trapped in a nightmarish, violent version of the DC Universe with many altered heroes and villains then the storyline concludes with the creation of the New 52 titles running today with updated versions of the DC heroes.

6. “The Hanged Man” from Journeyman; it’s a short-lived series from 2007 that in a similar vein to Quantum Leap had the hero (reporter Dan Vasser-played by Kevin McKidd) uncontrollably time traveling and changing history. In this episode, Dan leaves behind a digital camera in 1984 that is reverse engineered. When he returns, not only is technology more advanced but his young son is erased and instead has a daughter, leaving him with a deep moral dilemma.

5.” Profile In Silver” from The Twilight Zone of the 1980s; the late Lane Smith portrays a history professor who goes back in time to study the assassination of his ancestor, John F. Kennedy, and winds up saving him. This of course begins a cataclysmic chain of events due to time trying to compensate for the alteration. In other words World War III is about to erupt. In true Twilight Zone fashion, the ending is a real twist.

4. The Guns Of The South; Harry Turtledove’s masterpiece is about what happens when Confederate soldiers are armed with AK-47s by time-traveling racist white South Africans. Obviously this turns the tide of the Civil War in the Confederate’s favor and readers learn that Lincoln loses re-election, Robert E. Lee becomes president of the C.S.A., the U.S. gets into a war with Britain and the Confederacy becomes a technologically advanced nation.

3. The Age of Apocalypse Storyline from the X-Men books; Professor X of the X-Men is accidently killed in the past by his son. This chain reaction leads to the villainous mutant Apocalypse conquering America and committing genocide on non-mutants. For months the crossover X-books featured alternate versions of mutants such as a heroic Magneto leading the X-Men, Wolverine with a missing hand and teams with different members some of whom are villains in the regular books like Sabretooth.

2. The Nantucket Trilogy comprised of S.M. Stirling’s books Island In The Sea Of Time, Against The Tide Of Years and On The Oceans Of Eternity; the storyline has the island of Nantucket, its modern-day inhabitants and a Coast Guard ship sent back in time to the Bronze Age. Their necessary interactions with the people in that time period lead to early introductions to gunpowder, primitive air travel and increased global trade and contact. Naturally trouble starts when renegades leave Nantucket and begin to carve out their own kingdoms leading to armed conflict.

1. The Back To The Future Trilogy; Robert Zemeckis’ three films about a time-traveling teenager and his buddy scientist is actually a fantastic examination of the Butterfly Effect. In the first film, Marty McFly travels from the 1980s in a DeLorean to the 1950s and prevents his parents from falling in love. The obvious effect is that he and his siblings are being erased so he has to restore the timeline (audiences are helped by the rapid fire explanations of Doc Brown about the nuances of time travel). He succeeds for the most part. While his parents do wind up together they are changed due to their future son’s influence and this results in Marty’s family being better off when he returns to the ’80s.

In the second film, a trip to 2015 results in a more dire Butterfly Effect. The trilogy’s villain Biff Tannen steals the DeLorean and travels to the ’50s to make his younger self rich. When Marty McFly and his friend Doc Brown return to the ’80s, their hometown has been transformed into a nightmarish vision. Seedy casinos and chemical plants are everywhere,

crime is rampant and even Richard Nixon is still president while the Vietnam War rages on. Marty’s family life is radically changed as his father is dead and his mother is married to Tannen. In the third film, the Butterfly Effect is reflected in the duo’s adventures in the 1880s; chiefly with their confrontation with Tannen’s murderous ancestor which could lead to their premature deaths. The Effect is last touched upon in the end when we see a landmark renamed and Marty McFly altering an event in the ’80s that has an unknown yet hopeful alteration to his future.

José Soto