Author: HORansome

The Firefly Quandary

“So, did you see ‘Serenity?'”

“Oh yes. ‘I’m like a leaf in the wind…'”

“‘Splunk!’ Wasn’t it the greatest?”

“Pretty damn good. Actually much, much better than I thought it would be.”

“Come on, it’s Joss Whedon. The man’s a god. ‘Firefly’ is the best science fiction series of recent note!”

“Aah, I’m more of a ‘Farscape’ fan, myself.”

“Yeah, well, ‘Farscape’ had four seasons; ‘Firefly’ only had the thirteen episodes.”

“So?”

“Well, had ‘Firefly’ run as long as ‘Farscape’ it would have been the better series…”

You can see my quandary, readers. If ‘Firefly had run four years, then it would have been better than ‘Farscape.’ To evaluate such a claim you would need to look at what else Mr. Whedon has written and produced. (more…)

10/02/2005

D’Argo, tell him who his daddy is!

Farscape

It took me several weeks (hurrah for illnesses that leave you unable to do anything particularly taxing) but I have now watched all four seasons of ‘Farscape’ plus the mini-series-cum-movie ‘The Peacekeeper Wars.’ My judgement; I can comfortable pronounce it to be good. Great even.

To broadly overgeneralise, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Babylon 5’ remapped American telefantasy. ‘Babylon 5’ introduced the ‘proper way of dealing with long term stories’ and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ naturalised genre TV’s dialogue (which, since we are dealing with fiction, doesn’t mean ‘naturalised’ at all). Both of these shows have a very special place in my heart but both shows, because they rewrote so much of their respective landscapes, have flaws that really have only become apparent with their natural successors. For ‘Babylon 5’ its most fatal flaw is dialogue; whilst it has its share of great and motivational speeches some of the dialogue is incredibly samey. ‘Buffy,’ on the other hand, had hip and smart dialogue but its season-length plotting sometimes had a lot to answer for.

‘Farscape,’ for all its flaws, is the next-gen show. (more…)

09/19/2005

No Fear (except when he sings the word ‘eternity’)

I’m a pop whore; I’m not afraid to admit to it. Music to me is the opium of the masses. I accept no snobbery (anymore) in re what is good and what isn’t; if the hoi polloi like it then who am I to judge?

Still (there is always a ‘but’ or ‘however’ in these circumstances, isn’t there?) I can still wax lyrical on style versus substance. Take ‘The Rasmus’s’ latest effort ‘No Fear.’ Musically, whilst not inventive, it sounds good… as long as you fail to listen to the lyrics. It bangs and rolls away like a rock anthem, but when you listen to the lead singer it becomes suddenly awkward and angsty. Not in that good way but rather like the Livejournal musings of a fourteen year-old middle class proto-goth.

(I need to write something about the unnecessary proliferation of analogies, especially since I am hoping that it will cure me of writing sentences that have a ‘like’ in the middle of them…)

Perhaps the context, which I am unaware of, saves it; those of you who think that ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is overblown obviously have not listened to the album whence it came; when perfectly situated the song climbs even higher in the echelons of ‘This is the good!’ In the same way, that old musichall favourite ‘My Old Dutch’ moves from sacharine to moving when you realise that it is about a couple, married forty years, going to the workhouses, never to see one another again.

Then again, I suspect ‘The Rasmus’ really aren’t in any particularly bad situation and thus the song is simply nu-rock-goth for the sake of blackness; even blacker, being the raison d’etre of the young these days. Perhaps someone they knew died… It’s possible. Then again, perhaps someone they knew had a dream that someone they knew died. Or maybe someone they didn’t know had a dream someone they knew died and they imagined such a situation and wrote a song about it, a song featuring the lyrics ”Operation Darkness.” It probably wasn’t all that important to the sound engineer; I suspect he (or she) rolled their eyes upon hearing the lead singer lay down the vocals.

I like the pretty background noise.

…

I suspect I should go back to the Twenties for a week or two.

09/03/2005

It’s been a month, dammit!

(Nota bene: For those who care, this was meant to go up a fortnight ago and I thought it had. Then again, no one actually cares all that much so…)

The major flaw in TV’s hit new series ‘Lost’ is that it isn’t clear, until the end of the season, that only a month occurs between episode one and episode twenty-five.

One month. Not the third of the year that it took to screen episodes one to twenty-five over in the States.

(more…)

08/29/2005

Dialogue

I’ve recently finished the CRPG ‘Knights of the Old Republic’ and, frankly, I’m sick to death of role-playing games that feature odious amounts of combat in the endgame when, prior to that point, non-combatitive options had been offered. But that’s by-the-by; what I really want to complain about is branching dialogue. (more…)

07/31/2005

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

When the song you hear whilst reading the sixth book in an on-going series is ‘Gethsemane’ from ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ then you know something is wrong.

Then I was inspired
Now I’m sad and tired
Listen surely I’ve exceeded
Expectations

The book is overwritten; massively so. It feels like a book that has been produced to set up the final text in the series. I’m disappointed in ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.’ It is a competent book; the character development (in parts) is believeable (to the point that the teenagers really are aggravating) and the strands from earlier stories are beginning to be drawn towards their inevitable conclusion. It isn’t startlingly good, however, and Rowling can write well. Very well; this is why the books work in both the adult and children’s market.

Why then am I scared
To finish what I started
What you started
I didn’t start it

I’m more than willing to take some of the blame for this; the market created a want for J. K. Rowling to produce bigger books and she has provided her fans with exactly what they wanted. In return we’ve provided her with fame and wealth and, I suspect quite sadly, no real need to write.

Pity really. Still, what wouldn’t I give to be in her position…

(Answers on a postcard)

07/29/2005