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.

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

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

The new self-help fad sweeping the Galaxy.

Celebrity Speaker Extolls Virtues of Arcane Weaponry As Motivational Metaphor

May the Glaive be with you. Always. You know you’ve tried to use The Force. C’mon, just admit it. Reached out your hand and focused with all of your might on lifting your toy X-Wing out of a muddy puddle in the backyard when no one was looking. The Glaive, a cross between a boomerang, shuriken and a pocket knife/switchblade, was a unique weapon wielded by Colwyn, the Errol-Flynn-meets-Luke-Skywalker King of planet Krull, using Force-like techniques to control it.

Krull, the fantasy/sci-fi movie from 1983, always seemed like one part Star Wars, one part Lord of the Rings (though, I guess back then I wouldn’t have made the LOTR reference. Maybe more like classic Robin Hood films – not the Kevin Costner/Bryan Adams chickflick). You know, Hero’s Journey/Joseph Campbell stuff. Or maybe they just copped that medieval episode from classic Galactica (the one where Starbuck teaches all of those blonde pre-Narnia kids how to storm a castle while singing a song to remember their strategy). Hey, come to think of it, The Empire Strikes Back was sort of like the Ice Planet Zero BSG episode (man, those Oliva Newton-John wannabe clones were glacier-melting hot). Not sure which came first in that case, and too lazy to Wiki it today. And that whole Firefly series was kinda like the cowboy Galactica episode (Red Eye the cylon RULED!). Hey, it’s all good – it just always made sense that EVERY sci-fi franchise should have an ice planet episode, a western-in-space episode, a medieval-in-space episode, etc. It’s just what you do.

Watching Krull again recently, I realized how all of the various situations that test Colwyn in his quest to save Princess Lyssa from the evil Beast could be translated into a self-help program encouraging positive thinking, building confidence, etc. Colwyn is just such a hyper-positive dude. In the end, when your Glaive is stuck in the flesh of the hideous Beast and you can’t get it back, you’ve got to trust in yourself. Though there’s also that special fire the Princess gave you – you know, the fire that you can shoot out of your hand. That always helps, too.

– Nigel Matrix

Cylon vs. PC

I think Cylons evolved from Macs. They seem to have the whole “cool design” theme going. Plus centralized development and implementation of software and hardware that is designed to work together seamlessly. The inside of their basestars have that minimalist, modern Apple Store look. The Cylons also have built-in iTunes so they can download their favorite versions of old Jimi Hendrix tunes directly into their minds (yeah, Jimi was a Cylon, too).

Galactica and the fleet, on the other hand, are probably running on ancient Windows machines and patched-together third-party software, downloaded for free off of some seedy Sagitaran file-sharing site. It all just barely holds together.

Now, as for Starbuck, I think she’s a Linux girl. Rebellious, open source, eager to follow her own path to the truth. No one really knows what to make of her. Plus, I think I saw a little penguin tattoo somewhere on her arm…

By the way, if you caught last week’s episode of BSG, “No Exit”, then you saw the cameo by John Hodgman (PC in the “Get a Mac” ads) as a neurosurgeon tasked with removing a bullet from Cylon Anders’ brain. Kinda distracting, actually, seeing PC there right at the moment when Anders was streaming all of this long-awaited information about everything.

– Nigel Matrix

Mr.T vs. Captain Apollo

Colonial Warriors Fail to Recognize Similar Fashion Excesses

It’s got to be nepotism, really.  How else could Captain Apollo have gotten promoted?  Sure, he was a faithful “company man” and always ready to follow dog-food slinging Ben Cartwright’s orders.  But honestly, his character was written as a bit slow on the uptake.  A good man, certainly, but not the brightest cog in the mighty Battlestar machine.  Starbuck, his good pal of questionable morals, not only was a better card player, but also seemed quicker on the draw and a lot more skilled in tactics and flying a Viper.  So did Boomer.  So did Sheba.  Heck, so did Jolly…and he couldn’t even make Lieutenant (err, there might have been a weight requirement).  For all his extra salary and responsibility under Daddy Adama, Apollo never lost that “gee whiz” attitude toward life.

Mr. T, on the other hand, never seemed to have a “gee whiz” vibe at all.  He rarely smiled, and his public persona in the media was largely all action and anger.  So much so that he became an Internet legend, and the “Mr. T vs.” online phenomena was born.  Long before LOLcats, Photoshop was weakening Western Culture by allowing the creation of online comics showing Mr. T fighting everybody.  They’re all the same, of course.  Mr. T drives the van, beats up bad guys, and saves the Youth Center.  He proclaims that either he, or his van is “Hella Tough”.   Barney, Pokemon, Space Ghost…pretty much anybody you can think of.    It’s kind of mind numbing and hypnotic, and once you open one, it’s hard to quit.  But think about it, if you had to pick someone to whoop everyone in the universe, who better?

Mr. T, of course, initially garnered much of his fame from The A-Team, playing opposite Dirk Benedict, fresh from his halcyon (Ha! Cylon?) Galactica days.  He wore a lot–and I mean, a lot–of gold chains, the weight of which would crush a lesser man.  But, if you think about it, the Colonial Warriors were pretty blinged-out, too; losta clasps, pins, patches, gold trim, capes…so who are they to judge?  Granted, Apollo wore his feathers as emblems sewn into his shirt instead of dangling from an earring loop, but if I had to put my money on one of them, I’d say it was Mr. T who probably figured out the right way to accessorize.  Oh, yeah, and “TR3”, on Mr. T’s belt buckle is the name of some kinda car wash or polish he was hawking back in the 80s.  The TV commercial is findable online, and T says of the product in question: “Goes on easy, stays on hard.  Makes your car beautiful, like me.”

The Final Fifth Cylon Is….

Mechanical Vegetable Extractor Revealed to Be Enemy of Humanity

There were only three old-school cylon models–centurian, IL series (the ones with the awesome disco heads) and the goat-faced, purple-afro’d Imperious Leader, who had this unexplainable obsession with sitting thirty feet high in the air under a mood light.   Purists will say, yes, a fourth humaniod model was added in Galactica 1980.  And the really obsessed will say, yes, there was a fifth “civilian” cylon model present at the Battle of Gamoray in “The Living Legend Part II”.  Fine.  But now there’s twelve cylons in the new series, and we don’t even know who they are.  They don’t even know who they are.   And after being off the air for what, 9 or 12 months, it’s hard to remember the ones that we did figure out.   But slowly it’s ramping up speed again.  Maybe it’s the fact that they keep saying “The Final Episodes” in the commercials…closure is a good thing.

Rampant speculation fueled the Internet regarding who the final fifth cylon was: Starbuck?  Apollo?  Roslin?  That smarmy lawyer dude?  Now the truth has been revealed, and it’s just somewhat of a “meh” revelation.  Meanwhile, a Cute Robot Movie From Disney swarmed out of Pixar land and took over western culture for a while.  Gee, let’s take Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, strand him on the Earth with mountains of garbage, and give him really, really sad eyes, like a puppy whose favorite chew toy just got taken away.  Oh, yeah, let him collect sporks, and maybe old lunchboxes.   And humanity is all fat and bloblike, cruising through space with all their needs taken care of.  (How did they do it without sporks and lunchboxes?!?!) Don’t get me wrong, Wall-E was beautifully animated and very, very well done, and if heavy-handed environmental moralizing is your thing, you might want to see it again.  Wall-E’s “girlfriend” is EVE, and automated vegetable extraction robot (and exemplar of the term “probe droid”) whose task is to see if the Earth can sustain life again.  EVE has a bit of a mean streak, though, and is a little too trigger-happy with her killer lasers.  Poor Wall-E, who has no weapons, is dating a ‘bot that could mop up the floor with him, despite the whole puppy-dog thing he’s got going on.  It’s the old “girlfriend with a black belt” syndrome.

When we come away from Nuevo Galatica, what lesson are we supposed to learn?  That blonde women are evil, they get inside your head, and there’s lots of them?  That your bald with a capital “B”, hard-drinking XO is really an evil robot with a thing for Dylan tunes, and that his wife is even eviller (is that a word?  is now…) cause she’s mean to the evil hard drinking friend you didn’t even know was a robot?    Or maybe it’s just that your tools shouldn’t think on their own.  Not even the ones you send to look for emerging plant life.  Or maybe…if you have a hard-driving executive officer who’s bald and also secretly an evil robot…send him to look for sporks and lunchboxes?