Closet Sci-Fi Geek

Star Wars Original Trilogy DVD Set With Original Footage Coming Out!!!

Yay!!! The original Star Wars Trilogy is coming out on DVD with “bonus” unaltered versions included as “extras” - as if that’s not the whole reason all of us Star Wars fans are going to lining up to buy the set.

Yes, that’s right. I want to watch the original version, with the now outdated effects, and see the Death Star blow up in one sparkly 1970s explosion instead of that overdone purple shockwave thing they first pioneered in the Star Trek films.

Now if they were realllly cool, they’d include Hardware Wars as an extra. I’d love to see that again. It must be on the net somewhere. Anyone?

Eureka Has Cute Little Webisodes Online…

Eureka has some cute webisodes online at the Sci Fi Channel website. The webisodes feature the actual stars of the show (this is not some cheesy offshoot) and include some of the quirky dialogue (Matt Frewer: “Fargo, you poor sycophantic bastard!”).

The show has grown on me…it’s getting an average 2.0 rating so we’ll see if it lasts. Show star Colin Ferguson was interviewed in the Los Angeles Times recently as well.

Hey, Look, I’ve Been Interviewed!

I was interviewed about my interested in science fiction by Richard Hawkins over at the SciFi UK Review - check it out!

Equilibrium, Starring Christian Bale and Taye Diggs

Equilibrium (2002) was one of those films that completely zipped past me when it was out in the theaters. Since I hadn’t heard of it before, I wasn’t expecting much when I rented the DVD. Then the beginning of the film really had me worried: An overblown narration tells of World War III and how humans decided to get rid of emotions in order to save us from ourselves. A specially trained cop called a “Cleric” was designated to sniff out any “sense offenders” and arrest them (or shoot them on the spot).

In the first scene, we see Cleric Preston (Christian Bale) storming into a room filled with renegades who are hoarding works of art. There, they find the Mona Lisa (the “authentic” Mona Lisa) and torch it along with a host of other paintings. So already I’m wondering how the Mona Lisa ended up in what appears to be the remains of the United States, hidden under the floorboards in an old apartment. (As if the renegades couldn’t find a better hiding place for it!)

So this entire premise seemed completely implausible to me at first, but I decided to give the film a chance.

As the film gets going, it gets more interesting. All citizens in this future world are required to take shots of Prozium to remove their emotions (the Prozium actually mutes the excessive highs and lows but does leave a small bit of emotion left). Any sort of art and decoration is banned. People live in a grey, bland city without entertainment or love.

The film follows Preston as he accidentally drops one of his doses and ends up feeling things. This, of course, leads to all sorts of action and chaos. By the end, it’s clear that what’s at stake here isn’t so much saving humans from themselves, but providing power and control to those at the top. And this finally made some sense to me.

I ended up liking the film a lot more than I expected. It’s got great acting from Bale, an interesting plot that has some surprising little twists (and one expected one), and some great action scenes.

The fighting scenes are terrific and one of the best parts of the film. Now, it would be easy to compare Equilibrium to The Matrix because of choreography. There are some similarities. But Equilibrium manages to make the fighting still fresh and interesting. One of my favorite scenes involved our hero and his nemesis slapping guns away from each other. Somehow, it worked.

The film also carries a social statement about the use of drugs to dull emotions. Prozium is obviously a take-off on Prozac. As someone who feels that “Big Pharma” is too often pushing everyone to walk around as emotionless sheeple, I’m definitely glad to see sci-fi take on this issue.

Overall, I was totally won over by Equilibrium by the time it was over with, so much so that I look forward to renting it again and rewatching it someday.

Gaia Online…Yet Another Online Time Suck

Since I do work as an Internet Consultant, I can sometimes justify my time spent on online communities as time keeping in touch with the field I work in. (Ummm…yeah.) Tonight I’ve been puttering around Gaia Online, which is an online community that offers elements of role playing. Everyone on the site gets an avatar, which you can dress up and house in your own custom house (if you can find a vacancy, that is).

Like many online MMORPGs, Gaia Online has its own currency, which you can use to buy new clothes and goodies for your character. You can earn coins by playing games, by referring members (woo hoo, I’ll get 50 gold coins on each sign up, so I can buy me a new hat…yippee skippity), and by otherwise not having a real life.

The site appears to be partially built upon an expanded version of the phpBB bulletin board system, which somewhat surprises me. They’ve mixed that in somehow with a lot of Flash, so this conglomeration all works to create an avatar version of MySpace complete with custom profile pages, online journals (or blogs), and forums. It’s all a bit cutesy, but charming in its own way.

Some online games are available…nothing too exciting so far, but you can play online blackjack and earn some tickets for more virtual goodies. But as we’ve seen, people will often pay real money to get their hands on some virtual cash when they get addicted to these universes.

I am waiting for the day, sometime in the future, when virtual reality really becomes a reality, and all these virtual goodies will actually feel real. I can see an entire generation being lost to virtual worlds. Which is fine by me, there’s too much traffic anyway.

Deconstructing the Death Star’s Trash Compactor

I accidentally stumbled upon this very funny analysis of the famous trash compactor that appears in the original Star Wars.

I will attempt to respond to each point raised here:

Ignoring the question of how Princess Leia could possibly know where the trash compactor is, or that the vent she blasts open leads to a good hiding place for the rescue crew, why are there vents leading down there at all?

Let me first respond by saying that Princess Leia, as we find out in Return of the Jedi, has as much talent with the Force as her brother. So the Force told her where the trash compactor was.

As for her shooting at a “vent” leading down to the trash compactor. That vent was obviously a garbage shoot. They had to throw their garbage somewhere, didn’t they?

Why do both walls of the trash compactor move towards each other, rather than employing a one-movable-wall system that would thus rely on the anchored stability, to say nothing of the strength, of the other, non-moving wall, to crush trash more effectively?

Because it looks cooler.

Why does the trash compactor compact trash so slowly, and with such difficulty, once the resistance of a thin metal rod is introduced?

The thin metal rod is made from a space age metal that happens to be extremely strong when jammed lengthwise in between two moving trash compactor walls.

Why does the trash compactor only compact trash sideways?

The flattened pieces of trash are used as insulation for new Death Star condos being constructed. It is a little known fact that the Death Star was part of a real estate bubble that hit the galaxy at that time, and developers were extremely busy building condos and other prime habitats on the Death Star for the evil denizens of the Empire. Grand Moff Tarkin was actually quite the real estate investor, and had previously “flipped” a few planet-sized battle stations prior to his command of the Death Star.

And what of the creature that lives in the trash compactor?

He is obviously an abandoned pet of one of the Stormtroopers, who has been flushed down the toilet much like a baby alligator and has grown to tremendous size in the sewage system.

Why not have separate systems for organic and inorganic waste, thus allowing full compaction of the inorganics and a closed sanitary system for the organics?

Now, now. Would Darth Vadar, half-man, half-machine, order such obvious and blatant discrimation to be instituted against so-called “inorganic” material?

Why does the Empire care, anyway, about reducing its organic garbage output?

Is it really about reducing organic garbage output? Or creating nifty bits of insulation for those Death Star condos I mentioned above?

If the Empire insists on ejecting trash into space, why do they bother compacting it?

Ahh, assumptions, assumptions. The author has assumed that the Death Star ejects its trash, much like the spaceships do. But as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, such garbage is perfect material for condo-making. The Empire is smarter than you think!

I hope I have satisfactorily answered the questions about the Death Star trash compactor. It is important that we respect the Empire…or suffer Vadar’s wrath.

Horror Meets Sci-Fi on Event Horizon

Ahhhh, there’s nothing like blood and gore on a spaceship. If you like horror mixed with your sci-fi, then 1997’s Event Horizon is for you.

I like 90s sci-fi. Following in the heels of the Alien sequels, a fabulous trend emerged whereby a recalcitrant crew, often made up of a band of rugged misfits, meets terror and daunting challenges out in space (or, alternatively, underwater). It could be in the form of a creepy alien with slime dripping out of its mouth, some sort of terrifying time/space anomaly, or, in the case of Event Horizon, pure evil.

The crew in these types of films is always foul-mouthed and crude; they’ll often get into fights with each other when things start going seriously south. There’s always a few women included, and they are usually wearing the requisite army green tanktops with their hair loosely tied up into a bun or ponytail.

If we’re lucky, a few of these crewmembers will die horrible, nasty deaths, leaving the rest to run around in terror doing stupid things they shouldn’t.

This is, of course, the case with Event Horizon, which has the added bonus of Sam Neill, an excellent actor, duking it out with Laurence Fishburne, who only does well in The Matrix because his wooden acting fit that role. Neill, even with his crappy role here in Event Horizon, still manages to make the screen light up, whereas Fishburne is almost painful to watch at times.

This is too bad, because we get a lot of Fishburne in the film. He plays the captain of a rescue ship that has been called to recover the lost ship Event Horizon, which disappeared from time and space for seven years. Neill plays the scientist who originally designed the Event Horizon.

The Event Horizon is now a spooky relic, and the mystery is, where was it all those seven years? The ship was supposed to create a black hole to travel from any spot in the universe to any other spot. When crazy things start happening on the ship, and the blood starts pouring, it becomes quite evident that the ship has gone much farther - it really has gone where no man has gone before. Meanwhile, Sam Neill’s character starts going completely insane…

As plots go, Event Horizon has an interesting story, if just that there’s a mystery wanting to be solved. I wasn’t blown away by the horror, however, which is strange, since I generally have a low fright threshold. I’ve read others saying this movie was one of the scariest things they’ve seen. Well, not for me. This film did not scare me one bit, nor will it have me up at night with the lights on. That said, I enjoyed the story behind the lost ship, and found the concept to be highly intriguiging.

Alas, the special effects are showing their age: The CGI used in the film is obviously inferior to today’s. Most of this shows up when we see the Event Horizon zero gravity and computer-generated objects are floating around. The rest of the special effects hold up just fine otherwise.

And thus, I give Event Horizon a B grade, meaning it’s a worthwhile rental and a good thing to watch when you’ve seen all the latest releases. It’s not a classic, but it’s a decent flick.

The Angry Red Planet (1959)

Watching something like The Angry Red Planet makes me wish I had my own cadre of sarcastic robots ala “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ sitting in the front row. Science fiction doesn’t weather time well quite often. Futuristic films may be the vanguard of their day, but become kitsch later, as the years wear away their glossy sheen. Tech becomes out-of-date, and special effects look quaint and silly by modern sensibilities.

In this case, we’ve got everything that makes for a film fun for all the wrong reasons: Bad special effects, ridiculous creatures, and stupid plot devices. Fortunately, the acting isn’t all that horrible, and there’s enough here to make this interesting enough to sit through the whole thing.

The year is sometime in the future. The first manned rocketship to Mars lands on the mysterious red planet, with four eager scientists ready to go exploring. We’ve got three guys and one flaming redhead of a female, notable for her beauty and a rich, commanding voice typical of actresses from that era.

Only, things aren’t as they seem on Mars. The intrepid crew has a few close calls: A giant man-eating plant and a large spider-like bat creature are just two of the creepy things populating Mars. The suspense builds as the crew gets chased by a giant amoeba that threatens to engulf the entire ship. Will they survive?

The story is told mostly in flashback; as a plot device, this works fine in the context of the film. What doesn’t quite work is the simplistic science and stupid actions by the crew. For example, the woman scientist enrages the giant spider-bat by cutting at its leg. (From afar, it looked like a tree.) One wonders, however, how anyone could not have noticed the rest of the giant monster attached to said leg. It filled up the entire horizon and seemed kind of hard to miss.

The Mars sequences are filmed in a special effect called “Cinemagic,” which basically looks like a red lens was placed over the camera and the film was slightly overexposed. This actually gives the film a unique look and eerie beauty that is interesting to watch even to this day. Live action shots are interspersed with drawn renditions of the Mars surface…these somewhat work, if only because the Cinemagic effect makes everything a little blurry.

The rocketship, of course, is as kitschy as you could possibly imagine. My vote for favorite useless item in the ship has to be the huge sign on the wall that says: “Oxygen Consumption” followed by two options: “Normal” and “Excessive.” There’s no indication of how one might fix “excessive” oxygen consumption, however.

As campy old films go, this is a fun one, if just to see how far we’ve come in the realm of science fiction film-making. Not quite 10 years later, 2001: A Space Odyssey was created. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Battlestar Galactica, Military Politics, and Journalists

(This post contains spoilers for those of you who haven’t finished seasons one and two yet.)

Battlestar Galactica has some interesting and sometimes contradictory messages about the military. First, we had a military coup, which made Adama look like an asshole (and frankly seemed out of character to me).

Then, we have a situation where civilians are killed by the Battlestar Galactica militia during a riot caused by civilian resistance to martial law. (This time, Colonel Tigh looks like the asshole, which makes more sense.)

But, rather than dealing with the officers and soldiers involved with the “Gideon Massacre,” the situation is happily resolved when an embedded reporter (who is actually a Cylon) boards the Galactica and creates a tearjerker news piece about how the brave Galactica soldiers are saving lives. At the end of the report, as soldiers and pilots walk through the halls of Galactica in slow motion, the original Battlestar Galactica theme plays in the background, oh so patriotically.

I kept trying to figure out what they were trying to say here. Support the troops, even when some of them stupidly kill civilians they aren’t supposed to be killing, and others are blitzed on drugs (eer, excuse me, “stims”)?

Or, was the message, look at how the media can manipulate the public on either side of the equation? Because at first, the reporter was going to do an expose on said “Gideon Massacre.” The tearjerker piece was created after Adama and the President asked for the reporter to do something more “balanced.”

Or…maybe the writers were just trying to say: Beware of all journalists, since they are actually Cylons in diguise.

Giving Eureka a Second Chance

I hated the Eureka premiere, which was bloated and boring as all get-out. That said, I felt it had potential, and if they were successful in creating a science-fiction version of Northern Exposure, then they might have something with Eureka.

So I finally got around to watching episode two, which was already light years ahead of the premiere. The plot itself was a bit predictable; it’s the comedy I enjoyed. Not being constrained by excessive exposition, Eureka as a one-hour show was finally what it should be: light, fun, and quirky.

Marshall Jack Carter has now become Sheriff of Eureka (there’s no mention of what happened to the old sheriff…it appears he just disappeared in between the time Jack left and returned for Walter’s funeral). Jack is really the guy who makes the show work, as he serves as the “fish out of water” who is constantly responding to all the sci-fi strangeness around him with the quick one-liner.

Jack now has a house - run by an A.I. called S.A.R.A.H., whose sexy feminine voice has actually been done by the male Doctor Fargo, the home’s creator. (This makes for some fun jokes in the episode.) The house has an attitude; when Jack doesn’t return home in time for the dinner S.A.R.A.H. has created, he’s locked out. The solution? Jack apologizes to the home, giving it a fond caress on the door.

I liked episode two enough to continue watching, so we’ll see how it goes. The funnier they make this, the more fans they’ll get. We’ll see if the show holds up and if it lasts through a season.