Movie and Television Reviews

Sometimes I marvel at how Lost has uncoiled from a Survivor-like adventure drama to a horror movie to an archetypal myth and sometimes I wonder if the writers are just making it up as they go along, complicating things to hide their own lack of cohesion. Did they really intend the smoke monster to turn into Locke? Why introduce the temple at this late date? Indeed, the piling-on of subplot after subplot is both interesting and tiresome.

I don't even know how to end this post. I'm so confused.

I was watching the pregame show for Lost and realized that both Pandora, the planet in Avatar (for the three of you who haven't seen it), and "The Island" in Lost are the same kind of semi-conscious natural god that I describe here. In fact, The Island gives Locke a renewed purpose in life, like Eywa motivates the Na'vi.

Lost: The Complete Seasons 1-5

1. Same old stuff: Assassinations, moles, nuclear weapons, torture. I love it! I wish it could be on every night.

2. Elisha Cuthbert looks a little better than at the end of last year. My wife is worried about her skin.

3. Jack sure recovered quickly from a 30-minute beating. No marks!

4. I think the Iran-like "Republic" and Russia plot is fairly realistic. The Islam-Caucasian (from the Caucasus, no less) axis should defuse criticisms of racism.

5. The cutting off of the hand was legitimately shocking. I hope they show her as an example of how officials should not be tough.

I haven't seen the special on the History channel (because the man doesn't want Cuban people to know the Truth! [just kidding]), but I've read most of the book upon which it's based. Reading Howard Zinn is like listening to eulogy, in reverse. Imagine going to a funeral and hearing a somber gentleman recount the times the recently departed Mr. Jones looked down Mrs. Smith's blouse and took peanuts from the Ralphs display instead of how Mr. Jones' cared for his ill wife for forty years and donated million of dollars to cancer research. That's what Howard Zinn (Hitchens does this as well in God isn't Great) does in the People's History of the United States: He picks what he perceives as the worst parts of American history and shoehorns it into his Marxist boot to create a narrative that reads:

America started off as an evil conspiracy amongst rich white men to enrich themselves further. Slowly but surely, however: leftists, atheists, Communists, feminists, and minorities chipped away at that power structure until the rich white men (very) reluctantly gave in to the pressure and allowed a measure of justice. The victories came at great cost to the heroic coalition of the oppressed and if their vigilance flags, white men stand at the ready to take away the vote of women and re-enact slavery. Much more needs to be done to achieve a truly just society like China, Palestine, Sweden, Cuba, and Madison, Wisconsin.

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I hadn't regularly watched a TV show in probably 18 years (Cheers? A-Team?) when a fellow soldier approached me in Iraq with the Stargate SG1 season-one DVD box.

"You look kind of bored. Check this out."

Hook, line, and sinker. I eventually watched every episode, sticking with the series through several "jump the shark" moments: the loss of Daniel Jackson, "Space Race" (second worst episode after the one where the kids lose their memory), the introduction of supernatural elements like "ascension," the Ori thing that never really worked. Through all of that, the show maintained its sense of humor, great characterization, and solid story lines.

Stargate Atlantis was a great show through and through. Loved every episode.

Because my wife and son shared my enthusiasm, Stargate means family, hot chocolate, fun, domestic warmth.

Now we have Stargate Universe, and I, with deep regret, have made the decision not to dive into this wormhole.

The producers of Stargate, in trying to mature the franchise, managed to lose everything that makes the first two series great while adding nothing but eye-rolling pretension.

The last episode of Stargate Universe I saw was "Light" (eye roll: the first episodes have one-word, "elemental" titles).

"Light" is the worst sci-fi episode I've seen in a long time, even rivaling the space junk that makes up the last two seasons of Battlestar Galactica.

The drama is thick, yet nothing much happens. All we get is longing stares that come before, during, and after characters make "tough" decisions. The direction is lugubrious. The treacly piano music too sappy for a Hallmark channel special on a family dealing with [insert disease].

Destiny is going into a sun and the captain has to choose the survivors. He picks a pilot, a medic, and holds a lottery for the rest of the seats.

Yeah? So what?

That happens every week in SG1 and Atlantis, in the episodes where the whole earth doesn't face extinction. Indeed, certain death is downright mundane on every sci-fi show, and you don't see anybody else making a big deal out it. Sure, Captain Kirk might agonize (for a few minutes!) over sending Spock on a suicide mission, but there'd be other stuff going on, and nobody would complain: Heck, they'd be fighting to take his place.

Any conflict in this stinker? Well, one guy protests, but Greer puts him down with one blow. That's it. The rest is people holding hands and talking into a camera.

Yes, saying their final goodbyes. Stargate writers already used the "saying 'goodbye' into a camera for posterity trick" in Stargate Atlantis. It's kind of funny there. It's also somewhat touching because we already know the characters. In "Light," it's derivative and fails to stir any emotion at all.

In the most blatant example of sci-fi cheating since the resurrection of Spock, Nicholas Rush happens to stow some "communication stones" aboard the Destiny before the planet they were on blows up. I guess the U.S. Air Force just leaves rocks capable of calling people at the edge of the Universe in the scientists' lounge. OK, well, what do the writers plan on using these stones? They're going to let crew members visit their families so that we can have further buckets-full of melodrama.

Then, there's the "groundbreaking" stuff. It's race in Star Trek. "Strong women," next. Both sexes showering together in Starship Troopers and BG. In 2009, ground-breaking means homosexuality. Actually, in sci-fi, it just means lesbianism. Recently, we've had lesbians in BG and Firefly.

Why?

Well, who watches sci-fi? That's right, young guys. Strait guys don't like to see male homosexuality. Solution, lesbians. You get your progressive, groundbreaking, PC cred while titillating most of your audience (and probably not even that- guys might like to watch lesbians, but which one reads about their relationship ups and downs?), and turning off few.

Call me whatever you want, I don't like it in my sci-fi (and, no, I don't think it's like the racists who didn't like Uhura). This is especially true if I have to watch gay relationships develop and wane. And, triply true if such relationships are the centerpiece of the show. And edge-of-universe true if the show has no other redeeming qualities.

Thanks for the memories, Stargate. It's been one heck of a ride. I must be getting off now.

I watched an average amount of TV during my high school years, but I missed V somehow so I can't compare the new one to the original.

I can say that this V is the solid, middle-of-the-road (no faux cable "edginess") TV drama that I happen to enjoy very much. For comparison, I submit Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles and all of those great eighties mini series like World War III.

In V, aliens come down to earth bearing gifts and beautiful women baring legs to gain our trust (primitive, but hey, it'd work on me).

In case that doesn't work, however, the "Visitors" managed to infiltrate every institution on earth except the media, members of which they have to recruit when they get here.

One of those recruits is Chad Decker (Michael J. Fox look-alike Scott Wolf). Stargate and Firefly alumna Anna (Morena Baccarin) thinks that the press can be manipulated by a pretty face and flattery. In her studies of earth, Anna obviously missed the lesson about our press being impenetrably honest and scrupulously impartial reporters.

Also in the mix are Lost doctor Elizabeth Mitchell as an FBI agent who's skeptical of the V presentation. Her son is the kind of slacker who would have to move out of an Asymmetric household. There's a brother lizard on the inside and a priest.

I liked:

1. One of the first scenes is really quite inspired. Usually, in these invasion movies, you have the military discover a blip on the radar and contact the president who then authorizes an ineffective response. At the beginning of V, we just see the end result- an F-16 fighter crashing into a building and its pilot floating down onto the street.

2. Seeing out-of-work sci-fi stars get a gig.

I didn't like:

1. The teen dumminess and nerd humor (laughing at them).

Overall, worth a second night of watching.

Politics/Message:

During the TV interview with Decker, evil hot lizard-chick, Anna smiles and accuses the reporter of inhibiting "change" and "progress." What kind of progress? Free health care. Decker really perks up at the mere mention of this liberal catnip. For you guys into political allegory:

Obama is a candidate who covers his harmful agenda with his physical attractiveness, smooth words, and grandiose promises (health care); and who intimidates (Fox) or charms (Chris Matthews) the press into giving him positive press coverage. He employs operatives (ACORN) to infiltrate society and enforce a one-world government (like on the V planet). To counter the Vs, earthlings organize into small, underfunded cells (Teabaggers).

The religion aspect is interesting. The priests wonder what the Visitors mean to the faith. The Vatican has spoken on the religious implications of intelligent aliens (without getting too much into it, if aliens have the signs of a soul, being able to distinguish good from evil, they'd have to be evangelized like any other souled being). The movie must have been aware of this statement, as they mention that the aliens are part of God's creation. Anyways, I'm glad they included a positive religious role-model.

The fact that people are positively-inclined towards good-looking people is a good insight.

**update**

I'm no the only one that saw an Obama-V connection.

This is the first real episode of Stargate Universe and I'm encouraged.

It turns out that the bickering amongst the crew does add a little more thoughtful depth to the series. I liked the military-scientist rift; where the scientist, Rush, psychoanalyzes the soldier, Greer, in order to denigrate him (a common tactic for those only able to compete with their minds, or so they think. Most really...).

Another instant depth charge is religion and SGU includes the real kind (some moderns really believe it), SG-1 and SGA having only dealt with dead or invented (for the show) myths. Pretty respectful for TV, too. The priest who took care of LT Matthew Scott was only a drunk. I think Scott wears a cross. He could turn into some kind of Catholic TV saint, doing for Catholics what Will from Will and Grace did for gays.

The story was fine for E03, even suspenseful: A little deus ex machina , but still requiring heroism from the characters.

The communication stones led to some decent melodrama. Chloe Armstrong seems to be responsible for the social-moral conscious (Daniel Jackson handled some of this area in the early years of SG-1), feminine (Dr. Keller in SGA) parts of the Destiny's psycho-atmosphere.