Category Television & Streaming

Jan 31 2012

2012 Doomsday Scenarios: Month One

Okay it’s 2012 now, supposedly our final year according to the Mayan calendar. Earth was put on notice last week with that big solar flare that could’ve disrupted our satellites (but thankfully didn’t). With all the hoopla about the end of the world, one has to wonder if this is our swan song, how will it end? Here at Starloggers, we’re going to examine the possible doomsday scenarios each month as a sort of countdown.

Doomsday Scenario No. 12: The Aliens Are Coming, The Aliens Are Coming

Whether the E.T.s are friendly, cuddly visitors or blood thirsty, destructive invaders, it can’t be denied that once they do arrive life as we know it is over. So even if the first contact is benevolent our isolation in the universe is gone and with it the way we see ourselves. This scenario would bring about an end of our world. These are the possible scenarios:

  • Friendly, curious neighbors come by to say hello: Think of E.T. or Starman or the alien greys from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. They mean well, they’re just explorers but their arrival is nonetheless disruptive. A variation of this scenario is explored in Carl Sagan’s book Contact (and film based on his work), where just the radio signals from another star changes our society.
  • We’re invited: Continuing to look at Contact, the aliens willingly or unwittingly give humanity the technology to travel to their world. This theme is also seen with the film Stargate and its TV shows, the John Carter books and Adam Strange in comic books.
  • The Enforcers: The gist of this scenario goes like this, aliens make first contact with humans. But we’re given a stern warning to clean up our act and play nice otherwise either  A) we can’t join their club or B) they’ll wipe us off the map. Option A was presented in Allen Steele’s Coyote universe books and option B was best shown with the classic The Day The Earth Stood Still.
  • Caught up in an interplanetary conflict: This is the plot for those Transformers films. We’re standing by innocently in our little blue world obsessed with nonsense like taxes, the presidential election and Snookie until BAM! A bunch of aliens from two different sides arrive and duke it out, using our planet as a battlefield. This also happened in the book The Last World War and the Aliens Vs. Predators films.
  • Aliens with a mysterious agenda: Most recently seen with the V series but a terrific example is Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End. What happens is that aliens arrive in mammoth motherships over major cities. They claim to be peaceful and want to help humanity but have another agenda they’re keeping from us. With V (the original show, the remake was pretty vague–could be why the show failed) the aliens wanted our water and us for food. In Childhood’s End the mysterious Overlords arrived to shepherd in our next evolutionary stage and move our descendants into the cosmos. Another example is that show from the late ’90s Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict, where the mysterious Taelons arrive on Earth bringing an era of peace but have secret motives for coming to our world.
  • This Petri dish Earth or we taste like chicken: The first V show and mini-series fit this bill. And if the UFO fanatics are to be believed, alien greys come to our planet to create human/alien hybrids and to conduct painful, invasive experiments on humans. On the big screen, this was best shown with the underrated film A Fire In The Sky.
  • INVASION: The tried and true plotline of alien contact. Aliens arrive in huge ships and proceed to stomp us into smithereens until the heroes in the third act find a way to beat them. Examples in film, shows and books are numerous and include War Of The Worlds, Independence Day, Battle: Los Angeles, Footfall, the Worldwar books, etc. A variation of the invasion scenario is the clandestine invasion where the aliens slowly infiltrate us until it’s too late. Check out the shows Threshold,  The X-Files, The Invaders, and First Wave (this invasion scenario is probably prevalent on TV for budgetary reasons) as examples. On film the most famous example is Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.

That’s one look at how 2012 could the end of the world as we know it (apologies to R.E.M.). One month down, eleven more to go; be prepared.

Special thanks to GEO for his contribution

Jan 26 2012

New Doctor Who Companions Scenarios

The Doctor and the Ponds

Showrunner Steven Moffat announced on December 15 that the Ponds, Amy and Rory, will be leaving Doctor Who, well I can’t help wondering, what’s next? This is sad news but at the same time, you can appreciate that change means creativity so goodbye is inevitable.  It’s a bittersweet time.  We will miss the camaraderie and hope for occasional visits, but shaking things up a bit might be fun, too.

 So I am sure that everyone has their own theories about who should be the new companion, but here are three possibilities that I’ve come up with and I am sure that just as the universe is infinite so are the possible companions for the Doctor.  My imagination led me here.  It will be interesting to see if there are any similarities between Steven Moffat’s companions and a simple fan.  Who would you pick for the esteemed Doctor?

 Scenario One – Strange Puppy Love:  A middle-aged women from New York City and her pre-teenage daughter travel with the Doctor along with their Pomeranian.  However, the women thinks she is dreaming and that the Doctor is actually the Pomeranian transformed into a man, who’s name happens to be Doctor Sandy. Coincidentally, he is sometimes called the Doctor.

Foxy Lady as Doctor Sandy. Photo by Olivia McLernon

She become flirty with him and laughs at herself because she thinks she is only dreaming this and that she is flirting with her dog.  The daughter knows the truth but needs the doctor to show her and her mother around time and space because her mom is a historian and is trying to write a book.   With her daughter’s help the mom is getting over her writer’s block and has all kinds of interesting historical tidbits that never would have occurred to her before and comes in handy in the Doctor’s adventures through time. 

Some of these tidbits could include her helping the underground railroad during the Civil War. There she helps the Civil War Judge’s wife, Mrs. Piatt by giving her the idea to use a lawn jockey holding an American flag to signal her husband’s absence. Or aiding Sacagawea as she guided Lewis and Clark. At the same time, she is floored by Sacagawea’s hardships and begins to appreciate her own life and time. Then she could wind up in the early 1960s and meets Rachel Carson while she writes Silent Spring. The mom encourages her and helps her see her legacy as she will soon die of breast cancer.

Continuing the time journeys in the 1960s and ’70s she becomes part of the inspiration for songs like “Space Oddity” and” Go Ask Alice” much to the chagrin of the Doctor.

 Scenario Two – The Red Widow:  Every companion that the Doctor travelled with always was light and pretty much excited to be travelling, except for Donna in the beginning.  What if the Doctor gets roped into a support group that doesn’t really do much to support each other and have been stuck in a rut for a couple of decades? To shake things up a bit, these people come from Australia (or anywhere else but Europe).

Some members of the group are upset over a lack of interest, drive and desire, except for one fellow, let’s call him Mack.  He is the extreme opposite.  He’s a knife-wielding Crocodile Dundee type who has been down in the dumps about the environmental protection acts of every species in Australia that has forced him to become a semi-vegetarian, as he cannot hunt as often as he likes.  

In the course of time traveling with the Doctor, he happens upon a hybrid version of the red spider-like Racnoss (the Red Spider Empress that tried to turn Donna into spider food for her brood and killed her no-good fiancé in “The Runaway Bride”).  This chelicerata/humanoid is the result of a human-Racnoss union, that didn’t end so well for the human.  However, this new species aren’t quite as lethal and can pass for normal humans (except for their abdomens).  However, when they mate, the urge to kill their mate is still strong but this varies. 

The Racnoss

Some have been able to resist this primal urge, but it is difficult to tell who can control the urge and who can’t.  The safest course would be to avoid them, but it is difficult to tell if they are hybrids, unless they are undressed because their abdomen is the only difference.  All this uncertainty and violence has made Mack come alive again. He is thrilled to be part of a hunt again, even if he is the prey.  He has become buddies with the few male spiders left who chose not to mate for fear of death.  They run an underground railroad for males who wish to escape the Chelicerae (fang-like claws) of entrapment and ultimately death.  The Doctor ultimately leaves him on Chelicarae

 Scenario Three – Cool Hand Luca:  A young girl, Luca, gets into trouble one night by throwing rocks at some cars’ windows in the Brooklyn hood.  She is about to be arrested when the Doctor intervenes knowing that if she does get arrested, her life is over at this point and he because that she is the female equivalent of the story, Cool Hand Luke.  Like Luke, if she goes to jail, she will become influential to her jail mates, but she will create resentment from the prison guards who will ultimately cause her early demise. 

He tries to give her some hope for her future and show her that she could contribute to the wonders of the universe.  Along the way, he discovers that she does actually have some amazing talents.  She can talk to the TARDIS and can maintain and fix it better than he can.  Her tough exterior and manner can often distract enemies while he searches for their weaknesses and the TARDIS can see that underneath all that hard armor Luca has a soft side, not unlike the TARDIS itself.

Gwen McLernon

Jan 13 2012

Fringe Nears Its End

Fringe ends its mid-season break when it airs a new episode “Back To Where You’ve Never Been” on Friday the 13th (!) on Fox.

Sadly, this may be the swan song for the show being that its ratings have been terrible. Fox president Kevin Reilly said recently that the show isn’t profitable which most likely means that it’s on the chopping block. A shame really. Fringe (about federal investigations into incidents dealing with fringe science) is the best science fiction show currently airing and credit has to go to the producers (Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and J.J. Abrams) for throwing caution into the wind and running full steam with the show’s complex mythology in this season.

Last time on Fringe, Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) returned from limbo into our universe much to the chagrin of the enigmatic Observers (who seem to be trying to maintain the dimensional and temporal cohesion of the multiverse). Unfortunately, Peter concludes that the universe he returned to is not his own because no one, not even his father Water Bishop (John Noble) or lover FBI agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) have any memory of him since he was erased from our  timeline.

Yes it’s a bit complicated, but here goes: throughout the show’s run there has been an impending war brewing between our universe and another parallel universe due to an incursion made by Walter back in the 1980s to a parallel world (where the World Trade Center is intact and airships dot the skies) to save Peter’s life and winds up bringing him to live in our universe.

All the interdimensional traveling is causing wormholes to appear that threaten to destroy the fabric of reality in both universes. At the end of the third season, the show jumps forward to 2026 where the parallel world is destroyed and ours face the same fate. Then there’s Olivia’s death at the hands of the evil alternate version of Walter. To reverse this, Peter Bishop uses a giant machine placed in the ancient past to change history in 2011. He creates an interdimensional bridge between the two universes so that both sides can work together and resolve their differences. It works, though it leaves an uneasy truce between the two factions and with Peter erased from the proper timeline.

For the most part the changes to the timeline have been very minor apart from Peter’s absence. The characters have changed subtly and only dedicated fans could spot the differences. This could be what disappointed some who expected wilder changes but it probably was an attempt by the show makers not to turn off casual viewers (not that it mattered since ratings plummeted anyway). At the end of the mid-season finale “Wallflower”, Peter was still trying to find his way back to his proper universe with the Observers on his tail.  Meanwhile it’s reveled that Olivia is an unsuspecting test subject of Massive Dynamic (one of those giant technological companies that are behind many fringe events). Click onto their official site: www.massivedynamic.com   

Obviously it helps if one has a good basic knowledge of the characters. Well that’s why DVDs exist. Being that it’s only three and a half seasons, it’s fairly easy to catch up to date. And it’s worth a rental or download. The show may have turned some off with its superficial similarities to The X-Files and the first few episodes of season one reinforce this notion. But this show isn’t about convoluted conspiracies that don’t make any sense and UFOs.  One could tell that the producers (responsible for LOST and the upcoming Alcatraz) have a game plan that rewards patient viewing. More or less all the weird stuff going on in this show (such as an invisible ex-soldier, a desperate scientist who mutilates his body in order to time travel and save his wife, or children who are born and rapidly mature into adulthood) that the standalone episodes are part of a larger tapestry where Walter Bishop is in the center of, thanks to his scientific brilliance. And his same brilliance research and theories in the past have also cost him dearly in terms of his sanity and relationship with Peter.

Fringe faces an uphill battle to get a fifth season greenlit. On Fox there are a three other genre shows vying for airtime. They include Terra Nova, Alcatraz and Touch. Add to that those moronic singing competition shows that eat up entire programming slots and there’s only so many shows the network will keep on the air.

What’s distressing is that the show more or less has a five-year story plan, meaning they only need a couple dozen episodes to bring the show to a proper conclusion. Fox could do the producers a favor and either renew the show for a final year perhaps with only thirteen episodes to conclude it, or give them enough notice that Fringe will be canceled this season so they can try to wrap up the series. If the second option happens then hopefully the show won’t feel truncated like season four of Babylon 5. That show suffered when it was forced to conclude its main storyline in the fourth season only to find out that a fifth season was greenlit. This led to a listless final season that didn’t seem to go anywhere in terms of story.

Of course, the worst fate is an outright cancellation that doesn’t give the producers time to conclude the show. This leaves fans with unanswered questions like who are the Observers and what is their agenda? Then there is the other terrible fate: a show that ends on a cliffhanger. Reassurances from the producers that they are seeking other venues to finish the show don’t help. It’s a rarity that another network picks up a canceled show and seriously, who wants to read a comic book or novel that finishes a live action story? It won’t feel complete and only serves to remind fans over how they were denied a proper ending. In the meantime, fans can enjoy the new slate of episodes that will be airing over the next few weeks.

José Soto

Check out this clip from the latest episode and groove to the psychedelic background music from Tommy James and the Shondells!

Dec 31 2011

Christmas With The Doctor

Steven Moffat has continued the traditionally awesome Doctor Who Christmas specials that began with the sensational “Voyage of the Damned” written by his predecessor, Russell T. Davis.  This episode was based on the 1974 book, The Voyage of the Dammed, written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts.  The book describes the fate of Jewish refugees who were forced onto the MS St. Louis ocean liner and were denied asylum in both America and Cuba in 1939.  Back to Doctor Who, the episode describes the bitter ex-corporate tycoon who is out to create the most collateral damage thereby bankrupting his former corporation, while in the process killing everyone on board and the Queen of England by crashing into her pad.

Now we move on into the Steven Moffat era of true Christmas spirit by recreating A Christmas Carol with a 2010 special also called “A Christmas Carol.”  Moffat not only captured Charles Dickens’ original spirit of good triumphant over greed; but he then updated and amazed us with technological and psychological leaps that kept us glued like a kid eyeing the biggest gift under the tree.  Adding flying sharks and opera singers made it even more mind-blowing, but the greatest feat was travelling back in time in the life of Kazran Sardick a Scrooge-like character. Thus, reversing the focal point in Sardick’s past so that it changed reality and altered his present-day self and saved the lives of the Doctor’s companions.  It’s wickedly complex, magical and a bit sentimental, but that’s why we love it so much. 

Finally, the latest in the series of Christmas Stories, “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe,” based upon C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  Miracles happen, so we do feel that the Christmas spirit has been kindled.  However, the similarity to the original story is not as pronounced or profound as we would have liked.  Featuring widowed Madge Arwell and her two children there were no cute characters (unless you count Matt Smith) or beautiful, bewitching evil witches.  The only evils ones were men who wanted to harvest trees by killing them with acid rain and WWII tragedies of missing airmen.  The evils of being lost at war (although this did relate to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and of acid rain seemed too far removed from the original very deliberate mind-altering ice queen.  Alas, the only comparison that we could make is that it left us feeling cold and missing the warm relationship with his companions. 

In fact, we started reminiscing about past companions and how in the end it just didn’t work out.  Martha Jones loved the Doctor but realized that it was never going to happen, Rose Tyler got stuck in another dimension, Donna Noble was forced to forget the Doctor because her mind would blow up if she didn’t and finally there was Amy Pond and her mysterious daughter, River Song.  We couldn’t see any future there because Amy was married and needed to stop dragging her husband over time and space and River Song said the beginning was the end so where does this leave us now? If he comes back does time stand still again?  So we were already grieving that loss more than the loss of the characters in this year’s special.  But just as the Doctor saved Madge’s family, she saved him by saying he couldn’t let them think he was dead.   So another Christmas miracle happened just about the time we were contemplating that a new non-emotionally attached companion (in other words a man) would be the best answer to travelling around deep, cold space.   He arrived at Amy’s TARDIS blue door and she announced to “Mr. Pond” that the Doctor was there, the ice inside our hearts melted, too.  Everyone (including the Doctor) cried tears of joy and we knew that the Doctor could make his way with his current companions, especially now that he is reunited with River Song as his wife and soul mate for a very long time to come (or the end of time, once again). 

Gwen McLernon

Dec 30 2011

Best Of 2011

Short and sweet here’s our rankings of the best (and worst) in sci-fi, fantasy, comics, etc. in film, TV, etc.

Best Sci-Fi TV Show

Fringe, with all the mind-bending twists, parallel universe visits, inter-dimensional funkiness, and John Noble’s brilliant portrayal of half-mad scientist Walter Bishop, this show has outdone The X-Files It’s a shame its ratings are plummeting making a fifth season not guaranteed. Please Fox, if you intend on canceling it, give the creators time to wrap up the show.

Best Horror TV Show

The Walking Dead, just the premiere episode in its second season made it scarier and more terrifying than anything shown in theaters. With many contenders for the title like Supernatural, True Blood and American Horror Story, The Walking Dead ate out the competition.

Best Fantasy Show

Finding Bigfoot–just kidding! Actually it’s a tie between True Blood and Game of Thrones. Sure the latter has many horror elements like vampires and witches, but the entire Sookie and the Faerie angle took the show into the fantasy realm.

Best Documentary/Reality Show

Prophets of Science Fiction, airing on the Science Channel offers viewers involving examinations of the lives of sci-fi literary greats and how their works influenced culture.

Best Cancelled TV Show

Stargate Universe, it’s too bad Syfy got impatient with this program thatdecided to jettison all the cowboy antics of previous Stargate shows and concentrate on the wonder of space travel. One truly got the impression that the people onboard the ancient starship Destiny were out exploring the unknown. Too bad viewers never got a proper series conclusion, which is nothing new with genre shows even on networks supposedly dedicated to them. But that’s another rant.

 

Best TV Character

Walter Bishop (John Noble) in Fringe. His mad scientist antics are very funny while also full of pathos. As stated online everywhere it’s a crime Noble hasn’t been nominated for an Emmy.
 

Most Missed TV Character

Castiel from Supernatural, our favorite deadpan angel sadly bit the dust shortly after the seventh season premiere. His death has overshadowed the rest of the season, even the supposed death of the Winchester Boys’ surrogate father Bobby.

Most Improved TV Character

The Eleventh Doctor as portrayed by Matt Smith in Doctor Who. After a shaky first season, Smith has grown comfortable with the role and showrunner Stephen Moffat has let the wild complexity of time travel define this show.

Best Series Finale

V, technically it was only a season finale but the show was cancelled. Nevertheless, people who still tuned in watched in glee as hated characters,especially annoying teenage son Tyler Evans (who incidently gets the title for Worst TV Character), get killed and the aliens apparently conquered the Earth with some kind of cosmic enrapturing that left most of the populace in a trance-like state of alien worship. Cool, the bad guys won!

Worst Series Finale

Smallville gave fans who waited ten years for Tom Welling a.k.a. Clark Kent the moment to finally put on the Superman suit and the show did not deliver it right. Sure Welling ripped open his shirt at the very end to reveal his S Shield and there were a couple of bad far away CG shots of Superman but that figure could’ve been anyone!

Best Sc-Fi Film

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, a genunine surprise given how disappointing Tim Burton’s 2001 remake was. This emotional film reinvigorated the franchise and took it in a new direction in a way that was better done than most ofther reboot attempts, including J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. Also the year’s best film line was heard in this movie: “NO!”

Best Horror Film

Insidious, made by the creators of Saw and Paranormal Activity used many ingredients for a memorable horror movie: creepy kids, demons, haunted houses, ooh time to sleep with the lights on.

Best Fantasy Movie

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II brings the film saga to a spectacular finish. Now the question remains will Potter mania stand the test of time? We think so.

Best Animated Film

TIE: Kung Fu Panda 2 and The Adventures of Tintin, Steven Spielberg gives us another rousing adventure film in the vein of Indiana Jones but using beautiful animation but Kung Fu Panda 2 had more heart in its story of Po the panda trying to discover his roots and inner self.

Best Super Hero Film

Captain America: The First Avenger, everything could’ve gone wrong but instead was a nearly perfect rendition and ode to one of Marvel’s earliest heroes.

Best Super Hero On Film

Captain America from Captain America: The First Avenger, see above and add in Chris Evans’ heartfelt portrayal of an average man who only wants to do good and became someone greater.

Biggest Disappointment

Green Lantern could’ve been so great but it wasn’t. In a summer with a patriotic hero, a larger than life thunder god and retro mutants this film presented a tepid origin story with forgettable villains and the 3D stunk. Unbelievably a sequel is still being planned.

Best Guilty Pleasure/Action Film

Battle: Los Angeles, the basic message of this alien invasion story told from the point of view of grunt marines is KILL, KILL, KILL! But there were many tense moments with great and gritty action sequences. Many claimed it was a mashup of Black Hawk Down and Transformers and they were right.

Best Use Of 3D In A Film

Transformers: Dark of the Moon may be dumb, noisy and be stricly for watching stuff blow up, but the 3D was nearly perfect and added depth to the film.

Best Trailer For An Upcoming Film

Prometheus, seriously we just don’t get tired of seeing this preview about Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien universe.

Best Comic Book Event

DC’s The New 52, was the game changer for the comic book world. It updated all the DC characters with a comprehensive reboot and the company’s aggressive push into digital online comics could pave the way to comics’ salvation.

Best Comic Book

Justice League, Jim Lee’s vivid art and the restructuring of the team’s personalities and relationships made this a can’t-miss comic.

Best Super Hero In Comic Books

TIE: Superman and Spider-Man, both flagship characters had their ups (Superman updated again but this time the changes largely work and readers are given two distinct versions of the character in his two books) and downs (Spider-Man is still suffering the damage of Marvel boss Joe Quesada’s boneheaded decision to have Spidey make a deal with the devil and erasing his marriage, still the Spider-Island story arc was whacky fun) yet continue to shine no matter their trappings. Honorable mentions go to Batman, The Flash and Captain America.