Category Archives: television

Robot Dogs, the return

Last night we watched the pilot ep of the new Bionic Woman. A review I read (Tom Shales?) reminded me of what was missing – and by “missing” I mean “not there,” I certainly don’t mean “lacking.”

In the original series, Jaime Sommers had a bionic dog named Max.

I searched my archives because I was pretty sure I posted about bionic dogs a couple of years ago. I found the post, “In the future we will all have…robot dogs,” but notice I forgot (repressed?) Max.

70’s television writers always seemed to pull the robotic dog out of the Big Bag of Hackneyed Plot Devices when their show started to go to ground, didn’t they? I’d try to answer the question of which came first, a show’s implosion or the addition of a robotic dog, but it seems a rather “chicken or the egg” proposition. Plus, much like the last time, I’ve gotten distracted thinking about zombie dogs and already lost interest in the subject.

Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep

Scifipedia is off to a pretty good start.

Their SciFi Original Movies season, not so much. The best thing I can say about Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep was that they called it Kraken instead of Killimari. I was only half-watching it, and I was still bored.

SciFi had a contest to name the film and I thought Killimari was an absolutely awesome name for a giant killer squid movie. “Kraken: tentacles of the deep” is also clever and appropriate for a giant squid B movie of the deep, but Killimari was, just, well, Killimari. Just say it out loud a few times. Perfect, no?

Alas, as it turned out, Kraken was a bad movie and thus undeserving of such a cool name. Kraken was just bad, but not Bad. Not endlessly rewatchably Bad. Certainly not “Gratuitous Linda Blair tapdancing sequence” Bad or “James Earl Jones yakking up a leopard” Bad or “Chuck Norris kickboxing the devil in Israel” Bad or even “Bela Lugosi wrestling a giant rubber octopus stolen from the prop room of a John Wayne movie” Bad. It was simply small-b bad. Drowning in mediocrity bad. Boring bad.

To make it worse, they followed it with Snakehead Terror which stars the unholy tryptich of Bruce Boxleitner, Carol Alt, and animatronic stairclimbing snakehead fish. Snakehead Terror is no Empire of the Ants, but it’s lightyears more entertaining than Kraken. B-movies can, and probably should, be many things: badly directed, badly edited, badly acted, even badly written (maybe, especially, badly written) but they should never be boring.

Galactica 1980 post part 5; I only wish the 6th episode starred Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce

Wet Hot American Summer is a highly under-rated Janeane Garofalo movie about the last day of summer camp.

Toward the end of the film the motley assortment of awkward campers prepare for the requisite softball championship scene. The dialogue goes like this:

Counselor:
So I say, when those anonymously evil campers from Camp Tigerclaw get here we give it our best shot and we try to come from behind at the last minute with some kooky trick play that we made up and we win the game! What do you say, campers?

The campers are skeptical.

Girl Camper:
It sounds like pretty well-worn territory.

Boy Camper:
The whole thing feels kind of trite. I say we forget it.


All of the campers agree.A bus arrives.The Counselor goes to the bus and confers with the counselor from Camp Tigerclaw, and then the Camp Tigerclaw bus pulls away.

Alas, “Spaceball”, Galactica 1980 epsiode 6, trods upon that well-worn baseball/softball game territory, and it hurts every bit as much as you’d expect. It’s funny, but not in the way they intended. If I think too much about it today my head might actually explode, and we can’t have that.

In closing, avoid Galactica 1980 and rent Wet Hot American Summer. It’s much, much better. The official website is even still active. It has a good cast. It’s relatively short. It’s dumb, but it’s fairly clever in it’s dumbness.

And most importantly, it actually means to be funny.

Galactica 1980 marathon, part 4, wherein I talk about Knight Rider instead because I still haven't been able to bring myself to finish watching episode 5

Obligatory Galactica 1980 content: Glen A. Larson was the executive Producer of Knight Rider, and even co-wrote the theme song.

This has been bothering me for a while. Since 1982, to be precise. Have you ever paid attention to the prologue for Knight Rider?

“Knight Rider, a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist. Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless in a world of criminals who operate above the law.”

What’s up with the loner schtick? It sounds romantic, I guess, but the plot revolves around the guy not being a loner. In fact, he runs with a whole pack. First of all, he’s supported by Knight Industries, presumably a big company. Knight Industries somehow operates the mercenary organization F.L.A.G. – the Foundation for Law and Government. F.L.A.G seems to be bound by neither the rules of law nor government, but we’re just going to let that go for now, because to think about it would just bring my headache back.

Even if you discount F.L.A.G., Michael Knight has also got a band of wacky sidekicks who ride around in an 18-wheeler and attend to his every need.

Probably most importantly, he has that deep homoerotic bond with his car, KITT.

What part of that spells loner? I mean, except in the whole existential “we’re all alone” sort of way, of course. If this guy is a loner, he’s a miserable failure at it.

Incidentally, William Daniels, the uncredited voice of KITT, was a guest star on Galactica 1980 in the 2 parter, “Night of the Cylons.” So there, more Galactica 1980 content. They were both Glen A. Larson shows, plus he’s pretty much guest starred on everything ever made, so it’s not really that interesting of a coincidence. Or, really, technically, a coincidence.

(proceed to part 5)

Mormons, or, Galactica 1980 marathon, part 3

Husband informs me that Barry Van Dyke and Not-Starbuck’s dorky motorcycles could fly in the first episodes of Galactica 1980, I was just in some sort of fugue state during the flying dorkcycle scenes and didn’t notice.

Oh well. Welcome to day 3 of the Galactica 1980 Fest, wherein we don’t actually watch an episode of the show because it gives us a pain right here and we need a little break. By “us” I of course mean “me.” Even as I type Husband is happily viewing an episode of Miami Vice that starred Miles Davis, who seemed intent on proving that a great, great musician could be a bad, bad actor. The episode is from 1985. The following year, Don Johnson proved to the world that a bad, bad actor could be a bad, bad musician with his opus, Heartbeat, but that’s a post for another day. I don’t think this episode is going to be as good (if by “good” you mean “bad”) as the one with James Brown as the leader of a UFO cult.

Tivo is not your damned friend.

There is a Miami Vice-Battlestar Galactica connection. It’s not Glen A. Larson. It’s Edward James Olmos, who co-starred on Miami Vice as the token (token actor, that is) and now stars in Battlestar Galactica (the iteration I refer to as “the real one”, much to Husband’s annoyance) as Admiral Adama. (Lorne Green Action Facial Hair sold seperately).

This post is a little too paranthetical (even for me).

The problem with prolonged viewing of Galactica 1980, and in fact any show from the franchise, is that it inevitably leads to prolonged ranting (by me, at any rate) about Mormons. Not all Mormons. Not even most Mormons. Only the Super-conservative misogynistic Mormon missionary dudes who live up the blocl. I got rid of them for a long stretch of time at one point by actually inviting them in and spilling the ashes of my deceased cat (it was actually a peppermill, but they didn’t know this).

So yeah, maybe I do have a problem with some Mormons. But those are specific individuals and they’d be annoying no matter what flavor of oppressive theology they adhered to. But I could ignore all that, if the Galactica Universe wasn’t just ooy-gooy with theology, which I find boring and trite. Again, no matter whose theology it is. Series creator Glen Larson really wears his religion on his sleeve in this one. Yes, I know, plenty of sci-fi is just rehashing of established religion. (I just did that nerdy thing where you clear your throat while croaking a word, in this case: The Matrix. You just didn’t hear it). I don’t care. It’s intellectually lazy. If you want to invent a religion, invent a religion. Don’t just make anagrams and call yourself clever.

If there’s overt Mormonism in some of Larson’s other epic masterpieces, Knight Rider, Buck Rogers, and Quincy spring to mind first, I’ve never noticed. My own babblings about Mormons and Battlestar Galactica are neither insightful nor interesting, so I’ll send you elsewhere if you’re interested in reading more on the subject.

Michael Lorenzen’s essay on “Battlestar Galactica and Mormonism is interesting, albeit stiff and awkwardly written. This essay is probably a better summary, although it doesn’t go into the depth that Lorenzen’s essay does.

Well, whatever. Just think about all those naked Lucy Lawless cylons and it will all a-okay.

You may think that it’s silly to devote time to the Glen A. Larson oevre, but that just means you haven’t been following U.S. politics closely enough. According to the requisite sci-fi moment in this year’s State of the Union Address, President W pointed out that Manimal is a serious threat to our freedom:

A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every life. Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Creator — and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale. (Applause.)

Sure, there are loads of bioethical issues to be addressed in the field of xenotransplantation and creation of chimeras is a hot topic. Personally, I think it’s unfortunate the Prez wants to devote more resources to stopping this research entirely, not because of the medical implications but because I’m so looking forward to someday being able to mutate into various animals at will, especially raptors.

Again, not for any medical reason. Just because the idea of being able to poop on people and get away with it sounds kinda fun. And raptors are big, big birds.

And on that note, it’s time for us to finally catch up with Friday night’s ep of (the real) Battlestar Galactica, “Downloaded.” With special guest star Lucy Lawless.

Go on to part 4