SciFi Channel's Alice

I don't know if anyone else saw Alice on the SciFi channel this week, but it was pretty disappointing. It's not that it was in any particular way bad, so much as it was uninteresting. It was basically the same premise as their previous miniseries, Tin Man. Alice takes place in what we would call the future of Wonderland, the original story having taken place in the almost-distant past. There might be people alive who still remember it, but probably not.

Again, it's not bad. It's just nothing new. It feels like the same writers, casting director and production designers had fun with Tin Man and decided to have the same fun with Alice. It's not poorly-written, poorly cast or poorly-designed. Quite the opposite. It's brilliant. It's just the same as Tin Man.

The casting is, in point of fact, pretty near perfect. Colm Meaney as the King of Hearts was brilliantly bumblesome, and the guy who plays Hatter was fun and plucky. The light comedy was as good as Tin Man, the clever interpretation of the characters and themes was equally fun.

The acting was... well... less than brilliant for the most part, but that's not to say bad. There were enough seasoned actors to pick up the slack when the inexperienced ones dropped it. The director was a bit below par for a SciFi Channel series, but the visuals were good enough that you really didn't notice his (or her) shortcomings.

So... As I said, all in all, not bad, just nothing new. If you saw Tin Man, you'll probably be a little disappointed with Alice, just because you've seen it already. If you didn't, you'll love it.

We're cookin' with Hydrogen now, baby.

This is a rant about this week's episode of Stargate Universe. This is a five minute conversation with a three second “I f*#@ing called it.” You probably don't care, but on the off-chance that somebody else watches SGU and also caught this (or didn't), here's my rant.

If you saw Stargate Universe this week, read on. If not, spoilers ahead.

Glad you decided to stick around. So, last week on SGU, Destiny fell out of hyperspace, presumably for a good reason. The initial assumption was that the ship was completely out of power and that the engines simply quit. At this point, I thought “well just open up the solar panels and recharge the batteries. This is an ancient ship. They surely had solar powered spaceships.” But I digress.

Luckily, the remaining shuttle still had power. So they determined that there were three planets orbiting the nearby star that might be habitable. The ship, it seems, dropped out of hyperspace where it did to give those aboard the best shot of survival. It appears that the ship is on a course that will slingshot it around one of the system's gas giants as a breaking maneuver. The crew guesstimates that the maneuver will put them on course to intercept the orbits of the three possibly-habitable planets. But no. Turns out, the ship comes out of the slingshot heading directly for the star. Bad for the people onboard.

Long story short, the shields were still up, but nothing else had power (including internal sensors), so they assumed the shields were down. Everything turns out okay, but there is some suspicion that Dr. Rush knew that the ship dropped out of FTL and shut down so that it could fly into the star, open its solar cells and recharge the batteries. To which I immediately said: “No shit, McFly.” I knew that and I don't have a degree in astrophysics, anthropology, or ancient spaceships.

2001

I just finished (no joke. Five minutes ago) reading 2001: a Space Odyssey. Wow. You really have to read the book to get anything at all from the movie. All that stuff with the apes makes sense now, and the first third of the movie actually means something.

If you haven’t read this book, do it right now. If I can read it in a week (and I did), you can do it in less. I didn’t realize that while Stanley Kubrick was filming the movie, Clarke was still writing the book, which wasn’t in bookstores until after the film was released.

Okay. I could just type every word of the epilogue, but I won’t. Go to a bookstore, or download the book, or go to the library. If you’re not going to read the book, at least read the epilogue. It doesn’t give anything away. It’s not even part of the story.

So… Last week I read Caves of Steel, and that was good, but different. Asimov is a great storyteller. Clarke is a great writer. Asimov tells an engrossing story of a detective in a future society where robots are third-class citizens. It’s a very complex social environment and it’s very cool.

Clarke rights about people. Humans. Every page is drenched in so much imagery that sometimes you have to read a page twice because you get so wrapped up in it that you forget what he’s actually describing.

Concerning machines: HAL is real. He acts like a computer; he thinks like a computer. Asimov’s robots… Not so much. They’re more romanticized. They’re people who happen to be made of metal. Very far-fetched and hard to relate to. When you read an Asimov book, you put reality on hold and take it on faith that these things are possible.

Reading Odyssey, I had to leave the light on. I measured my blackberry (on whom I read the whole book) to make sure it’s dimensions aren’t exactly 1:4:9 (It’s close enough that I had to measure it twice). I didn’t have to suspend reality because everything in the book is not so much “within the realm of plausibility” as it is “completely believable.” I mean War of the Worlds believable.

While I don’t mean to knock Asimov, I’d forgotten that reading a book could be this much fun. The last book I read that was this good was Dune. I wonder if 2001 is on blu-ray yet…

Help me Anthony Hopkins, you’re my only hope.

First of all, this isn’t happening, anymore than film adaptations of the holy trilogy.

Here’s the article from io9 about how to reboot Star Wars. Despite the author’s optimism, this will not happen while George W. Lucas is alive. Or gets bored with Indiana Jones (please God let that be soon). At this point in SW history, Lucas is just playing in his sandbox. Everybody else is all “hey. c… cool. More Star Wars. That’s… That’s great George. Thanks.” (translation: “*Sigh*… Well, it’s Star Wars, and I like Star Wars, and Revenge of the Sith wasn’t horrible, so maybe this won’t be either.”)

I’ll admit, I was excited when they announced the live-action series. But that was before I moved out of my parents’ house, and I (and televised science fiction) have grown up since then. Bottom line: as long as there’s still sand in “the Dune Sea” (that’s what he calls his sandbox), Lucas will not reboot Star Wars.

On the other hand, he is just the douchebag to pay somebody else to do it and just take all the money himself.

That being said, and having seen how well Star Trek’s reboot went, I got excited reading this article. I got right up to the point of casting it in my head. So everybody post your cast list. Or just one or two people you would love to see. I’ll post mine tomorrow-ish cause I am dead tired. My husband’s got me running all over the place while she’s at work all day.

Star Trek

Thor’s Unemployment Blog is proud to give you your first look at the brand new USS Enterprise.

So. Was it the best Star Trek film ever, bar none? Yes. Were all of the actors perfect? Yes. Was Zachary Quinto as Spock just rehash of Zachary Quinto as Sylar? No. The man is an artist.

The film is balls-to-the-wall excitement from the first minute. Not only that, but it’s got plot, character development, and all the other things you’ve come never to expect from a Star Trek film.

Yet at the same time there was chemistry between the actors, believable dialogue, and a sparing helping of situational irony and one-liners.

That being said, this is undeniably not only a good film, but a Star Trek film. Confusing I know, but bear with me. This film had such a great script that it convinced Leonard Nimoy to play Spock one last time, something he swore he would never do. It had all the characters you needed to see, this time portrayed by professional actors. Let it never again be said that Star Trek ruined anyone’s career. Star Trek gave careers to a bunch of washouts who otherwise couldn’t get a job.

No more of that nonsense.

Star Trek has finally reached the moment at which real actors can get excited about being in a cult film. While Simon Pegg’s Scotty was great, and Quinto’s Spock was not short of breathtaking, most impressive was Karl Urban’s portrayal of Bones. Not only did he manage to give the character a tangible soul, he retained every bit off Deforrest Kelley’s charm and inherent weirdness.

To sum up, the acting was extraordinary, the script was phenomenal, there was no time wasted on tedious explanations of why Klingons have head ridges, and just about every character said their iconic catch-phrases. Chris Pine even tossed in a little Shatner tribute at the very end. Subtle, but splendid.

To anyone who’s counting, this will mark the third occasion on which I cried at a movie. Number one was Phantom Menace, when Anakin left his mommy. Number two was Return of the King “you bow to no one.” Number three was Skywalker vs. younglings. But I have never wept uncontrollably (and I’m not ashamed to lose a few man points to admit it) until I heard Leonard Nimoy do the traditional monologue.

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her ongoing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life-forms and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before."

A question for the ages

Law 1: A robot must never harm a Human Being or, by inaction, allow a Human Being to come to harm.
Law2: A robot must obey any order given by a Human Being, unless following such an order would violate the first law.
Law 3: A robot must act to protect its own well-being, excet where doing so would violate one or both of the first two laws.

So what happens if a robot observes two Humans fighting? If it intercedes, one of the Humans will inevitably be harmed by the robot's action. If the robot does not intercede, one or both of the Humans will inevitably be harmed. What's a robot to do?