To The Stars!

Whether it’s Trek or Wars, there’s never been a better time to be a fan of Star stuff. 

I grew up enjoying both, but partly because Star Trek was a weekly show, I think I had a special fondness for The Next Generation series. Also, Star Wars was on hiatus during my formative nerd building years. I didn’t even see Return of the Jedi in theatres, but I distinctly recall being in the theatre with my brother and a friend at a matinee screening of Star Trek: The Undiscovered Journey. 

But tonight I watched the latest episode of The Mandalorian, followed by the second episode of the latest season of Discovery. In case you don’t know, The Mandalorian is a series based in the Star Wars universe, following the exploits and adventures of a lone bounty hunter, while Discovery is based in the Star Trek universe, following the exploits and adventures of the crew of a federation starship.

Both shows are drastically different, and this happy sci-fi fan has room in his heart for both. 

The Mandalorian is a western that happens to be set in space, leaning heavily into tropes defined by the golden age of westerns in cinema and TV. This includes dusty bars, lawless border towns, backstabbing former friends, running jobs to earn pay and delaing with unexpected hiccups to seemingly straightforward tasks, all while riding mostly alone across baren emptiness between episodes, picking up allies along the journey. 

Discovery is bombastic space science fiction, with huge battles, gibberish technobabble, shiny technology, epic, galaxy spanning life-or-death, end-of-the-known-worlds plots, starring a massive ensemble cast of colourful characters and adding to that by picking up new allies along the way.

Mostly though, I chose to write all this to bring up that I just want to see a crossover special where The Mandalorian’s Amy Sedaris and Discovery’s Tig Notaro characters get to meet up and hang out together. I don’t care how. I just want to see these two characters together! They’re hilarious. I feel like they’d be the best of friends if ever they got to meet. 

Expect my next dozen or so posts to be fanfic of just that!

Rogue One Ada Zero

Last night we watched Rogue One at our place. I hadn't seen it since the cinema, and Claire had never seen it. I liked as much as I did the first time, and while it's not perfect, it's still pretty amazing. At least it's better than the remake of A New Hope they put out under the title The Force Awakens. I love Baze and Chirrut, and K-2SO is a solid addition to the droids.

Rogue One also became the first Star Wars movie Ada has experienced, at least in part. She was awake when it started, and excited to see the spaceships and stars. But she fell asleep about half an hour in and I put her to bed.

I can't wait to show her A New Hope. She already recognises a lightsaber thanks to a story book she has about Return of the Jedi. It brought me no end of joy when, while in a toy store recently, she spontaneously picked up a lightsaber, held it to me, and said "whoom-whoom".

She'll make a great role-playing, board game loving, sci fi nerd.

 

So, This Is Happening

Admittedly, we've all known it was going to happen since Lucas first tinkered with "improving" the originals back in the late 90's (Oh god... was it that long ago already?!?).

This reminds me of a scene from Father Ted.

Stop tapping it. It was done the day it hit the cinema screen for the first time. Leave it alone.

How Far Is Too Far?

I'm playing catchup today with Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the CG cartoon series due to start it's third season soon. I loved the first season, chewing through the entire set in a matter of days, but I waited until season two was finished before really starting in on that one.

I have to say I love the clones! Every one of them is voiced by Dee Bradley Baker (met him once), and every one of them is awesome. I've always been a fan of the clone armour designs. I love the addition of colour to the otherwise stark white body suits of the galaxies elite troopers. Having an entire series that uses clones in almost every episode is just too much fun for me to watch.

The action in this version of the Star Wars universe is a pleasant trade-off between what we see the live action actors do in the movies and the crazy, super over-the-top antics of the earlier Clone Wars animated series by Genndy Tartakovsky. I never really got into that series. It was just too crazy and far from what we had seen in the movies. But this CG version has fantastic moments of action and combat, stunning lightsabre duels and mesmerising space battles, without sacrificing the impression that these warrior monks could really do this.

And it's surprisingly dark at times. People die, and not just the unnamed clones. Jedi are electrocuted to death, colonies are wiped out by the Trade Federation and, in the episode I have on while writing this, we see flame-throwers being used on sentient bug creatures. Evil, Separatist bug people, but sentient none-the-less.

Which brings me to why I started this, all to show off this one, 60 second scene. In the Star Wars universe, I have always gotten the impression that the Jedi were just good. Through and through. They would never sacrifice their ideals to achieve a goal. The Sith and bad, the Jedi are good. Sith use Force Lightning, Jedi use Force Push. That kind of thing. And it is why I absolutely love this series. Here, even the Jedi are not beyond forcing information out of a prisoner of war to get what they need.

Destined For Obsurity?

Young enthusiasm. Where do you think their future will lead them?

Do you think they knew where they were going when this was taken?

Since Last We Met

It's been a busy few weeks. With Christmas just around the corner, I should be decorating the house, buying Christmas presents, writing a tonnes of "Thank You" cards for all those that wished us well after our wedding (at this rate you'll get your one bundled with the "Thank You For The Baby Gift"!), organising a "Thank You" party for the friends who are waiting for their "Thank You" cards(oh yeah.... I still haven't posted the story of us getting married... hopefully I'll do that some time before 2009!), planning where to spend Christmas, deciding what to do for New Years, deciding what to do with myself in the next 12 months, and so much more.

Instead, I've been playing Xbox.

Fallout 3 has sucked up over 50 hours of my life according to the in-game clock, but that doesn't include the times I've reloaded an earlier save to redo a decision I was unhappy with, or all the time I've spent just talking about it with friends. I love how many different versions of the same events people have. "I did this and pick-pocketed him and got this!" "Really? I did this, talked to her, sneaked past him and got this!" "Wow." "That's nothing. I loaded up on shotgun shells, killed them all, and found all this!!" Stunned silence. "But... but... it was a commune of innocent old ladies..." "Bitches had bottlecaps." Awesome stuff.

I picked up Mirrors Edge cheap in a sale in town. I'm glad I did too. It's ok, but frustrating. I wish I'd started it on Easy Mode, as I have no patience for it now. I know that as soon as I get stuck in an area, I'm going to drop it and never go back to it.

In contrast, I borrowed The Force Unleashed off my brother, and started that on Easy Mode after getting sick of Fallout for a while. I thought it would be a nice diversion, running around hacking and slashing with my lightsabre, but I didn't think I'd get much value out of it. Instead, I got totally sucked into the story, pouring over each beautifully rendered cut-scene, enjoying the witty banter the Apprentice throws out, and really enjoying the game far more than I expected. I felt like I cheated myself out of some of the enjoyment by playing it on Easy. But it did mean that I got through the entire game in just a few hours, over two evenings, and got straight back into Fallout!

Thanks to Microsoft's generous offer of making online gaming free to everyone for one weekend, I also spent a lot of time playing Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 with Bob and Aidan. It was my first experience of the Live multiplayer, and we all really enjoyed it. So much so, that we're all going to start a 12 month Gold Membership within the next two weeks or so. That same weekend got me back into Burnout Paradise, and now I'm slowly pulling down the number of Wins required to get my Elite license. It sat above 100 for months, and it's now in the mid 80's... so... sometime before the Xbox 1080 is released I should have that done! Online Paradise is amazing, and loads and loads of fun either with friends I know in real life, or even just racing strangers! Crashing has never been so enjoyable.

And on top of all of those, I've been playing a little Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Tom Clancy's: EndWar. Both games are a whole lot of fun, and deserve a lot more time than I've given to them so far, but I think they're going to wait until I've wrapped up Fallout and one or two others. Claire and I have also been enjoying playing the Xbox Arcade game Fable II Pub Games. Thankfully we don't have Fable II the game, as the town guards would be long after us at this point due to the massive debt we've accumulated! Fortunes Tower is a lot of fun, but frustrating, Spinner Box is the games own one-armed bandit, and we haven't really taken any time to learn where Keystone falls on the randomness scale. Most of our money has been won in Fortunes Tower tournaments, and lost in Fortunes Tower regular play!

Phew. I haven't played this much computer games in years. Hopefully it's just a phase, and in the New Year I can get back to being productive, doing lots of physical exercise, eating well, and writing the great Irish novel of the 21st Century.

Yeah.

Just A Good Ol' Country Pa

This speaks for itself. Watch.

That sensation of something running down the back of your thoat? That's you melted brains, slowly seeping out of your skull.

No? Not doing it for you? Then how about this, or this?!?