Mr. Hand Receives The Harshness

Psychic Urban Architect Harshes Alien Squid-Brained Sociologists

Every night, the Strangers erase our memories, implant new ones, and restructure our lives as well as our city through their ability to “tune” reality to whatever they desire.  They have cool taste in vintage cars.  But life in Dark City is just one big experiment. John Murdock also discovers that he has this ability to tune, and wakes up out of his false reality to control his own destiny (no, he doesn’t become Steve Vai’s guitar tech.  Steve has his own tuner.).  A slobbering, wheezing Keifer Sutherland and a smokin’ Jennifer Connoly accompany said fish-eyed dreamer (played by Rufus Sewell) on his noir psychedelic road trip to find Shell Beach.  Which doesn’t exist, of course, until he makes it.  What kind of allegory would it be otherwise?  All the while, he is pursued by the Strangers–Mr. Hand, Mr. Book, & co., who are basically a kind of space squid living in a zombie corpses.   They wear black all the time and listen to Depeche Mode.  Okay, not really.  But they should.  They dress like they should.

A cool psychic battle wraps things up as John finds his inner Jedi, and hey, it’s a lot better than the psychic battle at the end of Harmageddon (then again, what isn’t?  A psychic battle between Col. Sanders and Walt Disney–neither of whom, to the best of my knowledge, have psychic powers–would be better than the psychic battle at the end of Harmageddon.)  A sequel is rumored.  Not to Harmageddon, that would suck.  Well, at least, people could walk around yelling “Genma is Coming” over and over.  Again.  No, a sequel to Dark City.  Yea for Murdoch to recapture his dream mellow.  Don’t harsh on the dream mellow. Dude. Why.

BSG Finale: Hitchhiker’s Guide Ending

Prehistoric Breeding Rights: May The Best Dressed Prevail

Well, at least they didn’t do the Scooby Doo ending…although part of me would have liked to have seen Tigh grab Cavil by the scruff and proclaim that he was really Old Man Withers who ran the amusement park downtown.  No, instead we got the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy ending, wherein Ancient Astronauts of one sort or another interfere with the delicate balance of evolution on Earth.  I particularly liked the scene where Baltar, Adama, Tigh, and a few others lay down watching the Cave People in the distance, and someone says, “We can breed with them.”  Uh, huh-huh.  Hey, baby.  I like, know those caveguys from GEICO, or something.  Us and the Vikings from Capital One hang out.  Let’s see, what’s a good pickup line…Hey, baby, can I show you how to make fire?

Arthur and Ford, of course, arrive in the company of the Golgafrincham telephone sanitizer “B” Ark crew to accidentally replace the nascent population of primative humans on Prehistoric Earth.  The Galactica crew arrives with the half-bread (half-toaster) Cylon Brat Hera, who somehow Mothers the whole human race, becoming Genetic Eve.  I guess glowing spines are genetically recessive after a few generations.   No sweat.  All of this happened before, and all of it will happen again.  The only difference is that some of us are snappier dressers…and the others really know where their towels are, you hoop froods.

BSG Finale: Cavil Orders Pizza

Well, it’s finally over. Somewhat. Still another two-hour special, and then a new prequel series about some fembots or something. I thought the big finale, “Daybreak 1 & 2” was pretty cool. It definitely tied up things on an emotional level, and the action was great. The (spoilerz here, yo) Galactica ramming the Cylon Colony/Retirement Home for Active Classic Centurions was pretty awesome. Very Star Blazers-ish. And then Cavil entering the Galactica with Centurions was so “Vader boarding the Blockade Runner-ish”, I kept expecting Gaius Baltar to be sporting one of those silver streamlined bike helmets like the Rebel troops.

Cavil making the call on the phone to end the war just cracked me up completely. I mean, how did they know how to “patch him through” to the Cylon Colony? Is the phone number listed? Does the Cylon on the other end just trust that it’s really Cavil calling on some old corded analog phone from Galactica? Just thought it was a real WTF moment.

I like how Starbuck says “There must be some kind of way out of here” before she enters the All Along the Watchtower note number coordinates into the FTL computer. Those are actually lyrics from the song… cool.

As far as all of the mystical stuff, I think it was left open enough to interpret as either God or maybe just a more highly evolved entity running the show, hanging out with Head Six and Head Baltar, temporarily resurrecting Starbuck and so on. Maybe this same entity had seeded many worlds with similar, compatible life. Still, though, a lot of holes in the final resolution there, when you really think about evolution – not just biological, but cultural/languages, etc. And, really, all of those starships into the Sun? Just using them for scrap metal and shelter in the least would have made more sense. Oh well, it was a neat image, and the original 70’s fanfare in that scene was nice.

Thought they came very close to breaking the “fourth wall” in that last scene in NYC, with the awkward cameo of producer Ron Moore and Head Six and Head Baltar wandering about on holiday.

Overall, I enjoyed the ending and glad to see that the show didn’t just continue on forever and then fade away without resolution.

So say me, y’all…

– Nigel Matrix

Bender At Hogwarts

Time Travelling Robot Eradicates Magical Messenger Birds

Owls: useful couriers or scourge of the year 3000?  Well, the Muggles of New New York certainly have no use for them.  It’s a running joke in the background of Futurama that owls have replaced pigeons as the most common avian pest.  Yet they serve the folk at Hogwarts so well in our time, or whatever timeless time it’s supposed to be in Potterland (technically, there are more Weasleys….shouldn’t it be Weasleyland?  A Weasleyverse? Anyway, there’s a lingering sense that the Potterverse takes place in the 70s or 80s, because there’s just not enough body piercings among the student population to make us believe otherwise.)

Bender, the sarcastic, hard-drinking, fun-loving Planet Express delivery crewman, is send back in time to steal all the precious artifacts in history by a bunch of clothing-optional aliens in Bender’s Big Score.  This leads to multiple copies of said droid arriving at a simultaneous point in the future, creating temporal paradox.  So maybe he stopped by Hogwarts in nineteen-whatever to pick up a Hoarcrux or two, and happened to notice the avian pest infestation along the way.  Poor Errol. Poor Hedwig. Poor Fawkes the Pheonix…I wonder how many times he had to respawn before Bender figured it out?  Probably depends on how much Old Fortran Malt Liquor he brought along…or how many times Bender played that classic 1980s arcade shoot-’em up, you know, the one with the fiery birds from outer space….