This Years TV: The New Blood

So a few days ago I covered the returning shows, however we usually get a crop of new stuff each year, usually its 90% guff but this year has been a good one. Here's what I consider the top 5 (in no particular order) of the new genre series this year.

How did this get made. Seriously, how. With the networks that axed BSG, killed Firefly etc, how the hell did something this whimsically addictive get past initial pitch. All I can assume is that they pitched it as a crime series and left out the details until the cheques were cashed. I can see the meeting:

"We've got an idea for a series, there's a guy who can bring dead people back to life, but only for a minute or else something else dies, so him and his PI friend use the power to solve murders"

"Sounds good, fantasy twist on what is otherwise a crime show"

"Score, we've pulled the wool over their eyes"

See, Pushing daises is set in a bizarre fantasy world, ts kind of like a made up 1950's, but present day, Our hero is a Pie Maker, and at the core is the romance between him and the love of his life, Chuck, who he brought back from the dead. Only now he can't touch her or else she'll die again. She likewise can't get back in touch with her aunts, two retired synchronised swimmers, for fear of their reaction to her death. And that's just a taster of the madness that follows. Its light whimsy, with plenty of laughs and its just a real cuddly joy of a series. Hope this gets kept on.

Easily the most technically ambitious of the new crop this spinnoff from the Terminator franchise had a hard furrow to plough, for starters the 3rd Terminator film had killed Sarah Connor. However it was a very entertaining series, took some interesting angles and used a nice time travel style plot to effectively separate the timelines from that of the films. It had some nice ideas regarding the sending back of people and also had a rather chilling idea of how well a terminator can infiltrate (One has actually lived with a lover for years). To the series credit it also Didn't shirk from the terminator style effects. Indeed from what I hear it was expensive. Still, it appears to have survived the cull and got a second series, so hopefully we'll see this develop further.

There was a disturbing similarity in two brief descriptions for series this year, both augured ill. Reaper was described as "Bill & Ted meets the grim reaper" and features a slacker who's parents sold his soul to Satan and now has to collect escaped souls from hell assisted by his slacker mates. It sounded weak and despite having Kevin Smith's name attached looked missable, but it was on when nothing else was and I was really surprised. Basic premise is as described, we have Sam as our Reaper who works in a DIY shop called The Work bench (Kind of like B&Q) and each week he gets some telltale powers that hint to the escaped soul, and a vessel to catch it. It took its basic Monster of the Week format and developed it. In fact later episodes we get much more about demons living among us and a mystery surrounding Sam's true relationship with the devil. The supporting cast are good with his uber-Slacker mate Sock being easily the most likeable, despite being a cheap man's Jack Black. Its been fun and solid entertainment, again looks like we get a second season and unlike earlier this year, where I hoped it would die fast so we had 20 or so fun episodes before it went cack, it now has a direction and I'm looking forward to where this is going.

This was the second of the "Bill and ted meets.." pitches, only this time slackers were to be spies. The premise is that Chuck, normal guy who works at the "Nerd Herd" a sort of on site IT support for a big brand electronics store, accidentally gets a whole job lot of government secrets dumped in his brain, which he uses to foil acts of evil. He gets two handlers, one NSA who is pretty much an assassin, and the CIA one, an attractive blond. As a supporting cast he has his Sister and her husband, and his best mate Morgan. This was also entertaining, although much more of a One Man show compared to Reaper, we mainly focus on Chuck and his possible relationship with his CIA handler. It is a bit less light hearted than reaper as there is a lot about how disposable he is, how nasty the Government agencies can be etc, and Morgan took a lot longer to grow on me than Sock, but overall its been very good and definitely has a second season.

Ok, not really genre, but geek themed I decided was good enough. This comedy about a group of geeks and their attractive neighbour had a weak start. Initially the humour was very much focused on "Look at these daft geeks" however somewhere along the line the attractive neighbour had her role reduced and the humour started centring more around the interactions between the geeks. As a result its really become worth watching.

So, overall some good new starts this year, hopefully there won't be too many edits to this article to say they died young, and this is good, we loose BSG this (or next depending on how long they spin out Season 4) year, and lost the year after, so I am looking to what will fill the holes these shows leave.

Washout

QUick aside to pay triute to one of the best self contained issues I've read in a long time. The initiative just finished its current arc which saw the recruits that we've followed for the past 12 or so issues graduate to become full fledged heroes, this issue may have been the start of a new arc but works equally well as a standalone piece. The new recruits arrive at camp hammond, as well as Prodigy, the load of new recruits includes indestructable ex frycook Boulder, or as he becomed known, Butterball. As a nice idea though, while completely impossible to damage, he's unfit, clumsy and weak, and due to his powers, can't get fit or stronger. But he's possibly the most enthusiastic amongst the new recruits. By the end of the issue he is washed out, and while most peopel count him lucky, only ex villains Taskmaster and Constrictor actually understand and give him a very nice parting gift. Just a nice, well written and strangely touching story, possibly because you really identify with the enthusiastic but clumsy butterball who only wants to be a super hero. It also has one of the better showings of registration. He leaves camp hammond registered and War Machine even suggests he has a bright future working in hazardous environments or search and rescue. So not everyone with powers has to join a super-team or even pass camp hammond.

I'd thoroughly reccomend this issue to everyone, even if you haven't previously read The Initiative, or indeed a marvel comic.

Personally, I'd hope to see butterball appear in any future Damage Control series.

This Year's TV: The Returners

I went on, at tedious length about the new "golden age" of genre TV, now I'd like to review the year, ok so the year isn't over but particularly with the writers strike sending everything all ahooey this seems as good a time as any to review this year. As there has been so much I thought I'd split it between this post about the returning series and the next about the new boys.

A favorite of mine last season none the less suffered from some sluggish episodes in between the big stories. There was also the fear that for a series about a giant galactic convoy it was going nowhere. In that respect pitching this as the final series has most definitely done it the world of good. The Razor 2 parter concerning life on the Pegasus was good and had all those nice fan touches like classic cylons. The series itself is really motoring, in fact my biggest criticism is that with all the individual storylines going on we don't get as much of Edward James Olomos as Adama, who has been sidelined of late but still owns every scene he is in. There is also now a palpable sense of danger, the fleet took heavy losses in episode 1 and the government is verging on totalitarian plus religious wars in dogtown its really looking like all hell is really about to break loose. And that's just in the fleet. Overall its been a cracking season so far, and I'm genuinely looking forward to a conclusion of some sort, even if they wait until next year to show the second half.

Wild fan speculation: The fleet is wiped out, cylons populate the earth and become the humans we are today

Worst outcome: They find earth in the 1980s and have flying motorbikes.


Lost was the big "Must watch" show with mass crossover appeal. However for the past 3 years you could sum up the show by saying "Watch the first 5 episodes, ignore the middle and watch the last 5, you'll get the best bits with none of the tedious treading water that the middle of each series gave. Indeed when Lost was good, it was excellent, and when it was bad it was just plodding. There was speculation that this was because there was a disagreement between the show runners and the studio, the studio wanting things to be left open so that the show could run into the ground, the show runners preferring a set timescale, while this was up in the air the series did suffer from an over abundance of padding, particularly in the case of Jack, where I'm amazed we didn't have an oh so significant flashback to the Christmas where he didn't get that scaelextric set he so dearly wanted. However with a 5 year timescale now set in stone this is possibly up for the award of most improved. Things are really rolling, flashbacks have been (For the most part) replaced with flash forwards, adding a new layer of mystery and things just seem to be moving.

Wild Fan speculation: Ok not so wild but I predict that we'll see the circumstances of the Oceanic 6's rescue by series end, and that the final series will be wresting control of the island from the baddies.

Worst Outcome: We see a prolonged flashback concerning Jack learning to ride his first bike.


Heroes had a lot to live up to in its second series. The first was brilliant, but almost self contained. It left a little open but resolved many of its outlying plots. Indeed the first few episodes of the new season seemed to be faltering, but its slow burn and is slowly (On BBC2 speed at any rate) building up interest again, still to see the results of the post writers strike episodes when they allegedly undertook a serious rethink about the direction. Sill, going strong so far.

Wild Fanboy speculation: As long as they can run it out I reckon the underlying story will generally focus on a series "Big Bad" as a framing for development of history and character.

Worst Outcome: It starts getting bogged down in its own history and goes the way of the X-Files.


Arguably the oldest of these old series, Atlantis was one of the few not to be affected by the writers strike managing to deliver a whole series with no interruptions. It sagged in places as all stargate series tend to but we had some fun individual episodes and the arc plot when it kicked in is suitably meaty. Also worth noting is that they finally did an episode where T'ulc and Ronin kill everything. We also got the spinnoff TV movie The Arc of truth to complete SG1's Ori plot which was entertaining and a satisfying conclusion, although as a criticism it lacked the epic feel of some of SG1's season finale's.

Wild Fanboy Speculation: Teyla will be the next series main bad.

Worst outcome: They decide to do more replicator stuff.

Next post, the New boys

Blast from the Past

I was up in the loft a few days ago, trying to sort through my comics. After about 3 hours I'd got all my issues of Avengers into one box, not in order but its a start.

Gods I have a lot of Comics. I may repeat my sorting if opportunity presents itself.

Anyway, from this I found two small Limited series from a while back that I hadn't read in ages and decided to re-visit them (OK truth be told there was loads I wanted to bring down but the objective was to reduce the number of comics lying around) the 2 series, by happy coincidence, both contained ideas that I wish more had been done with.

First was a 3 issue USAgent Limited series. This was just after the Maximum Security event in 2001 and had John Walker, aka USAgent acting as a member of the Superhuman Tactical Activities Response Squad, or STARS, an agency tasked by the commission to capture escaped Superhuman criminals. With this he also got a Judge Dread inspired costume and a supporting cast. The story is pretty good, in the process of apprehending Machete from a hydra base Agent, his STARS team and a team mate forceably added to the team by a corrupt senator, get caught up in a scheme by the power broker to use an alien to mind control people. Now I first grew to like Agent in Force Works, where he seemed to mellow a little from his normally abrasive self. His character went somewhat backwards, although considering all the guff Marvel threw at him in the intraveneing period its not surprising he was bitter. This showed real potential but sadly the idea was ignored for years and eventually dropped, his next appearance would be calling himself Captain America in the short lived Invaders series. I would have liked to see this continue, it offered some interesting progression for a character forever relegated to second stringer or "Spare Cap" indeed Agent seems the least popular of Marvels spree of second characters such as Thunderstrike and War Machine. Still, with Agent last seen in Omega Flight this is a plot strand that may never be revisited. Shame.

The other was a series called Avataars: Covenant of the Shield, which was a 3 issue prologue to what was hoped would be a 12 issue mini series featuring Medieval knight type versions of Marvel characters. I think the initial thought for this came from the "Heroes Return" Avengers story where all the avengers were converted into medieval versions and made into an honour guard for Morgan Le Fay. Its again an interesting concept, but, being more of an intro it does sacrifice story for attempting to show its versions of as many Marvel characters as possible. Seriously some of them are literally a brief exposition type origin followed by an appearance then off again. Still it was left open and I wonder if there will ever be enough of an interest by a writer to re-visit that setting. Only problem may be that, post Neil Gaiman's 1602 any "Marvel but in the Past" ideas have a hell of a lot to live up to. Still unlike USAgent and STARS I can but hope it appears at some point.

Must go through more comics, judging by the shotgun approach I had to buying comics I wonder how many will be like 1602 and how many will be Megamorphs.

Tarted Up

Quick entry, I've added in a few images to existing articles to make the whole thing look less like a big bank of text, will try to keep an image or so in most posts in future.

Also, finally switched the time to GMT, so now all my time stamps in old posts are wonky. Will probably leave them be, rather than edit them.

War Machine

A quick aside to one of my favorite characters, Jim Rhodes aka War Machine.

See Jim is one of the reasons I got into comics, one of the first comics I owned was a War machine comic and my first serious collection was of his mid 90s series. It has been commented that if you want to get me to buy a series you can do worse than put War Machine or Jim Rhodes in it. Indeed, this is what marvel have done, repeatedly.

There seems to be a fair bit of enthusiasm by writers in the character of Jim Rhodes, as despite loosing his series, and his warwear armour (I Liked it) just before Onslaught, he's seemingly managed to keep some sort of profile in the MU, he was in Iron man when it re-launched, as indeed was War Machine, or an old suit flown by someone else. Later he appeared in "The Crew" an attempt at creating a streetwise team of mismatched heroes (Also featuring Casper Cole aka White Tiger, Junta, and Josiah X) and there was recently a MAX comic set in some form of alternate universe.

However recently he's been all over. After House of M he appeared in a spinnoff mini Sentinel Squad O.N.E. He had been recruited as an instructor for a team of human piloted specialist Sentinels, and even had a normal sized suit of sentinel themed armour. I liked this role a lot. It made a lot of character sense for him to semi-retire to a training role. Indeed this was progressed in The initiative, where he is in charge of Camp Hammond, the training camp for new heroes, and he has been given a new suit of War Machine armour by Stark.

However, his story is far from over, in a recent issue he is defeated by KIA, and has his mask removed against apparently standing instructions, one small shot shows a more cybernetic face and both that and the following issue refer to a "Condition" could Rhodes have been injured during business with ONE, can he ever leave the armour, just how much of him is left.

Come on Marvel, give us a War Machine mini filling in the gaps.

The Invasion Continues

As always, if you're waiting for the trade, I'd not read this one, try my post on U turns, its ranty.

Well, we're now on issue #2 plus we've had 2 issues of Mighty avengers and one of New. First a general opinion, Issue #2 was a bit lacklustre, it served a couple of nice touches but didn't really make the plot shift at all. Essentially it served to let the assembled avengers fight the people who emerged from the ship, and then get scrambled enough that now anyone there could be a skrull. Hawkeye/Ronin was also united with mockingbird who is apparently real. Like I said, would have preferred more movement with the plot, I just hope they won't make a habit of this or the series could really loose its momentum.

Anyway, from these issues and from some previews, some speculation. Fury is gathering young unknowns, so presumably fury knows the Skrulls are only picking important costumed heroes to replace, a nice touch. We know that Duggan, the Countess, Jarvis and Hank Pym are all skrulls, and in New avengers it is strongly implied that Spider-Woman is not just a Skrull but the leader, this could be a red herring but it fits with her strange use of previously unknown powers in Mighty Avengers. One interesting point from New Avengers was a possible clue as to who has been replaced. Basically it is easier to replace people who have murky origins and have died a lot. It doesn't narrow it too much but definitely adds Wolverine as a possibility. Another thought is Norman Osbourne, supposedly killed but suddenly survived, now leading the Thunderbolts, its not too much of a leap. Of course this could also hopefully undo the two kids he allegedly had with Gwen Stacey (Actually Skrulls here's hoping) and I still hope that One More day turns out to be a Skrull plot. Still, rolling along nicely.

U Turn

In a week where Gordon Brown is being berated for a series of U-Turns I do think we're getting to a stage where someone can't win. If you make a decision and stick by it, you're out of touch, stubborn and not listening to the people, but if you change your mind you're weak, or performing a U-Turn and thus similarly unfit. In fact the entire weight of the media seems against you even if you're going to be man enough to admit your mistake.

Someone once said in defence of a U-Turn that "I change my mind as the available facts change, what do you do?" but for some reason we're now indoctrinated to see any change on your path of thought as weakness, rather than admitting that you are a fallible human who has found out some facts that were previously unavailable and are now correcting your stance accordingly. This is why religion is more popular than science, they never change their mind no matter how much contradictory evidence presents itself, unlike that wishy washy science which seems to go out of its way to prove itself wrong.

In politic in particular I think U-Turns should be commended. Isn't the purpose of debate to persuade and present facts. If you listen to the opposition, and they make a good point, why do we lambaste politicians for saying "I never thought of it that way. You have given me much to think about and I may revise my stance on this issue" in the press said politician will now be "Wishy washy, or U-Turning" rather than "Reasonable"

Of course some U-Turns always look better than others. Gordon Brown's half U-Turn on the 10p tax issue (Which isn't quite a U-turn more panicked scrabbling) looks far more like he's realised how bad this looks for him and is trying damage control. Worse are his opponents, who mysteriously have all of a sudden developed a conscience and started rebelling on this despite next to no attention paid when it was discussed months ago. So, in this situation Brown looks like he's trying everything bar saying "Look, it was a bad idea, consider it struck" while everyone else looks like they're just trying to gain a scrap of power.

So, what would a good U-turn look like. Well, imagine Tony Blair, a few years ago, if he said "In light of the immense public feeling regarding going to war with Iraq, I have decided not to proceed" Or with the current ID card fiasco, "You know, these things are going to cost a fortune, and to little or no reasonable gain, so I motion to stop the whole thing" Ok so the latter would get him into serious trouble with the people who have already been promised the lucrative ID card contracts, and the former would have offended his buddy George, but all U-turns have consequences. Brown's litter tax is leaving a hole in his budget to the tune of some 7 million, and no doubt bringing back the 10p tax rate would add more, but realistically, his finances are pretty much stuffed with the upcoming credit crunch so he may as well try for something a bit populist.

In short I think people should be encouraged to change tack as facts unfold. At the moment we seem to want people to stubbornly stick to their guns, even when those guns are wanting for a mind changing metaphor.

Does whatever an Iron Can

I Saw the superlative Iron Man this weekend. It was a gamble, first film that Marvel have self funded, and I think it paid off.



Spoiler hats on kids.



Reviews have been mixed, with comic and SF reviews being positive, and the serious press being lukewarm. The serious reviews bemoan the lack of a big bad through, complaining that what we have is about an hour or so of Stark inventing Armour, then one big fight at the end. I personally think this was the film's strength. A film lead by any other studio would no doubt have balked at Iron Man only facing the Iron Monger ta the end, preferring him to be beaten first, recover from a crisis of confidence and go on to prevail.



So, to me brilliant film. In the opening acts, despite him being an amoral arms dealer, I wanted to be Tony Stark, and after his incarceration you just like him more. Robert Downy Jr really nailed the part. The scenes between him and Pepper Potts (Which I was dubious about) also really worked and they had a definite chemistry.



There was also a lot of succulent meat for us comic fans. Jim Rhodes hinting at War Machine, the 10 rings alluding to the mandarin, and of course SHIELD with the post credits Samuel L Jackson cameo as Nick Fury.



Overall a top film, if this is what Marvel can produce without meddling studios, long may they fund their own films.