ALT.SF4M Amusements 12/98 • j********o@***.com 23/12/1998 00:00:000 UTC Cute two-parter on 7 Days a while back: a cute solution to the Evil Twin problem. Quite an unexpected Brimstone this week - I think they're finding their feet as they add a little variety to the demons and more detail to the Devil: "The only thing I ever loved was God, and that was a *long* time ago!" Good Christmas MIllennium. Properly unearthly and upbeat. Rewatching that fairly cool episode of DS9 with "Section 31," Starfleet's nifty renegade secret police, and remembering the cool front-line episode with Billy Mumy (they actually had the guts to main Nog!), it occurred to me that this Dominion War may be setting the Federation up for a social schism, even a coup. I've always had the sense of a cultural divide between the aesthetes back on Earth and the reactionaries of Starfleet, and this brutal war might just push things too far. Starfleet's taken a real beating over the past decade - between the Borg, the Klingons, and the Dominion - and must be underfunded and alienated in such a peace-nic society. The military might feel it had no choice but to override the civil authorities, and what are the pacifist masses going to do about it? Getting back to that front-line episode, "The Siege of AR-558," or some such, we had some cool dialogue, notably Quark's speech on Human nature. I only wish that they could turn the lens around from examining merely the Human condition to contrasting it with that of aliens. How do Ferengi act when they're dirty and frightened? I guess they just whine louder, but I wish the writers would complete their point. It was always implied that other races tended to be either too civilized or not enough, and it was Mankind's precarious balance between savagery and mercy, between impulse and contemplation, that allowed them to peacefully conquer the galaxy. This prompts me to disagree with something I read lately, some writer's praise of B5's aliens: to me, inadequate as New Trek's aliens are, they're light-years ahead of Babylon Five's. The New Trek aliens may be a triffle underdeveloped, and the writers cling to a "we're all the same under our skin" philosophy that is clearly at odds with reality, but the B5 aliens were basically uninteresting. Sure, the political intrigues were amusing, but the cultures never became rich or real to me. The Feregi and Klingon outlooks may be unworkable in practice and thin in content but at least they're there and could be developed into something plausible, but I find the B5 aliens' societies flat and boring: at their best, they are cliched. I don't know what makes a Narn tick - I don't have a feel for their character or philosophy. I can't see the essential identity, the noble quality they strive after. I don't have a taste of their soul, their cultural theme. And I don't feel that I'm viewing it through the lens of Star Trek's rubber-stamp aliens: I just find the B5 alien cultures less real than those of even New Trek. Discuss among yourselves: "rubber stamp aliens" vs. "rubber suit aliens." Niven's Known Space aliens are interesting in that the stories are told from a human perspective and it's made clear that human-alien relations have not progressed to the stage where we really understand each other: e.g., if an alien acts angry, it's almost certainly a deliberate display, because if they were really upset, they couldn't maintain the facade of human expressions and language. You couldn't pay me to see the latest Trek movie: Berman loves to concoct "Two-fisted Liberal"-stories. Naturally, they're not _really_ mutinying, but defying a corrupt superior, and they don't have to kill any comrades so there will be no repurcussions. I was amused that the fat one of Siskel and Ebert included in his critique the legitimacy of the Bad Guys' position! Gorno It's not revenge, it's "blow-back!" • j********o@***.com 25/12/1998 00:00:000 UTC It's often been observed that many Trek episodes are really parallel universe stories (Miri, The Omega Glory, Bread and Circuses, etc.) and would be more plausable if they were done as such (Miri, of course, shouldn't have been done at all...). Anyway, a cute way of doing this without altering the premise of the show is if they *really* are alternative Earths thrust somehow into this dimension at another location (the whole Solar System might be transported, or merely the planet inserted at some similar orbit). This could be explained as a consequence of careless time-travel, say. Hoskin's Law might even have been an incorrect attempt to explain this. Gorno • j********o@***.com 27/12/1998 00:00:000 UTC I read that Fox is taking a serious look at a pilot script for a Buckaroo Banzai series. Gorno • Saravit 28/12/1998 00:00:000 UTC Ooh - that would be cool. I always liked the idea of Buckaroo Banzai even if it is really doofy. -Saravit JohnGorno wrote in message <1*************.*****.********5@n*****.***l.com>... >I read that Fox is taking a serious look at a pilot script for a Buckaroo >Banzai series. >Gorno • p*******x@****.com 29/12/1998 00:00:000 UTC While muttering something about 'Amusements 12/98' "Saravit" was heard to remark: >Ooh - that would be cool. I always liked the idea of Buckaroo Banzai even >if it is really doofy. Oh, it was a great film -- 73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK "Keep an eye on me, I shimmer on horizons" mailto:p*******x@****.com -- Throwing Muses, "Shimmer" http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux • Stargazer 28/12/1998 00:00:000 UTC JohnGorno wrote in message <1*************.*****.********5@n*****.***l.com>... >I read that Fox is taking a serious look at a pilot script for a Buckaroo >Banzai series. That could be mighty amusing! --Doc • a****4@f******.********n.ca 28/12/1998 00:00:000 UTC JohnGorno (j********o@***.com) writes: > I read that Fox is taking a serious look at a pilot script for a Buckaroo > Banzai series. If done properly, that would be really great! ttyl Farrell ...who is not holding his breath hoping for them to do it properly...