NASA Reel Blooper: What Really Happened

Misapplication Of Engineering Prowess Erases Historic Moonwalk For Sticky Snack

Well, NASA really hasn’t been all that cool for a while.  You know, the Space Shuttles were pretty neat, but most of them are too used up now.  And what was that business a few years back with the Mars probes crashing, vanishing, failing to work, etc?  Enh, nevermind, this takes the cake: NASA recently admitted to erasing the original footage of the moon landing.  You know, because they needed the tape.  Because, you know, I guess they were out of BetaMax.  And they needed one of those big huge reel thingies to tape something with.  Probably Married With Children.  Because that’s important, or something.  You know.  Historically. 

So Hollywood video doctors came to the rescue and digitally restored the lost footage,  apparently adding a lot more detail.  They could have just pulled it from a DVD of original Battlestar Galactica’s “Hand of God” episode.  But you knew that.  Anyway, rest assured, this won’t drive the conspiracy theorists into a frenzy.  People are more rational than that.  Except when it comes to making commercials for Fruit By The Foot (evil stepchild of the original Fruit Roll-Ups).  Those show t(w)eenage boys replacing each other’s body parts with said sticky snack, culminating in a total DNA replacement for the loser.  Hey, that’s pure Sci-Fi (and ever so Soylent Green), and now we know what really happened to the moon landing footage.  Lost in a round of Fruit By The Foot oneupsmanship.

You may have Syfy if you are…

I’ve got Syfy on my fingahs!!! (I keep going around saying that… if you listen to The Beatles you’ll know the reference). Supposedly the main reason for the Sci-Fi Channel to change to Syfy is that it can be trademarked, while Sci-Fi is a genre description so it couldn’t be. It’s just freaking me out, like, I feel as if I have a reading disorder as I know the word should be “sci-fi” but it’s spelled all weird now and somehow my brain is confused, like learning a new language. And their tagline is “Imagine Greater”, which is like a rip-off of the old Apple “Think Different” (both have adverb troubles, too…)

I think the problem with “syfy” is that it reads as “siffy” and not “sci-fi just spelled differently”. I think if they were a brand new channel/site it wouldn’t be a big deal, but to just re-brand an established channel that does well within its niche is weird. And if they are looking to expand beyond sci-fi content, then why not come up with some completely new name to reflect that? Weird…

– Nigel Matrix

Jeff Albertson Weighs In

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse than “Windows Mojave”, the ultimate rebrand FAIL arrives: Syfy.  No, it’s not a disease you get from an unsanitized telephone, it’s the new name for the “Channel Formerly Known As The Sci-Fi Network” (CFKATSN–Kiff Katson to you and me).  Maybe it would have been better if they had changed their name to an unpronounceable symbol.  That worked for Prince.  For a while. 

It just seems as if at the height of their popularity–everyone was talking about Battlestar Galactica Nuevo just a few short months ago…they are just giving up the concept that made them important.  If they don’t want to be Sci-Fi anymore, what’s the point?  (Kinda like when MTV stopped playing videos, right?)  Well, I’m sure they do, but they just want to do other stuff, too.  Like when Happy Days made Fonzie jump the shark because hanging out at Pat Morita’s Grill and learning Kara-te was not enough.  (“Fonzie…first paint fence, then jump shark.”)  Or when DragonTales added Enrique to the mix.  Or when Dora the Explorer became a Princess instead of a Scientist.  Or when KITT got “Super Pursuit Mode” on Knight Rider.  If it works and people like it, they depend on it…don’t change it because you think they’re bored…you’ll alienate them.  But no one ever learns this.  It just happens all the time.    Well, we can only shake our heads sadly and move on.  To paraphrase Jeff Albertson, better known as “Comic Book Guy” on The Simpsons…Worst.  Rebrand.  Ever.

–Raven