Movies we haven't seen • Books we haven't read • Music we haven't heard
Like anyone trapped in a state of suspended adolescence, I’ve made a name for myself in realms as far-flung as Zebes, Castlevania, Floating Island, and the Mushroom Kingdom. I’ve pillaged Bowser’s fiery keep more times than I can count — though, granted, it helps that he always leaves an ax standing behind his rickety suspension bridge. But through it all, I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that I’m not actually a fan of video games. I’m a fan of Mega Man.
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Letters - making the world a better place.
George,
I don’t fancy myself a fantasy nut, but my fancy has been struck, and your A Song of Ice and Fire novels are the ones doing the striking. You’ve made peace with the obligatory Lord of the Rings influence that plagues your peers, but you’re smarter than those chumps. Instead of brainlessly letting magic act as prime mover, you use it to set the scenery as the actions and words of your characters play out like great works of history.
You’re also about to turn 60, and you’ve got three more of these bricks to churn out. I’m not some fanboy ordering you to hustle — for the love of God, exactly the opposite. Keep yourself relaxed, or you are going to die.
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Media travelogues, reporting in every two weeks.
Episodes viewed: “Amok Time,” “Who Mourns for Adonais?”, “The Changeling,” “Mirror, Mirror,” “The Apple,” “The Doomsday Machine,” “Catspaw,” “I, Mudd”
Behold, the dawn of a new season! A program’s second stroll around the calendar is a risky venture. Smart show runners interpret a network’s decision to renew a series as a mandate to be awesome. But all too often the process of upping the budget and raising the stakes leads to a serious overstepping of boundaries; Friday Night Lights fans recoiled in horror when their favorite breezy small-town rubes chucked a corpse into a river. Trek had survived the first leg of its five-year mission – but what next?
Not a man to cower at the challenge, Gene Roddenberry instead took his beloved creation to Warp 9.
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Media travelogues, reporting in every two weeks.
Episodes viewed: “A Taste of Armageddon,” “This Side of Paradise,” “The Devil in the Dark,” “Errand of Mercy,” “The Alternative Factor,” “The City on the Edge of Forever,” “Operation: Annihilate!”
It’s easy to forget that the USS Enterprise’s five-year mission is a tour of duty. The vessel is officially on a scientific mission of peace, exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where no man has gone before — but in the unfortunate event of attack, it packs firepower that outclasses any WMD you can think of. And the battlefield is leagues in scope beyond our military’s.
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Movies we haven't seen • Books we haven't read • Music we haven't heard
Glossy and laminated on the surface but cradling something truly special, ABBA’s music is a uniter of uniters. The Swedish troubadours’ starry-eyed anthems celebrating love and life divided the public throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, but came into more widespread acceptance as a younger, more morose generation sought comfort in nostalgia. In the late ‘90s, this nostalgia gave birth to the most successful stage musical of all time. Touting an all-ABBA setlist, Mamma Mia! raked in $2 billion worldwide, its posters securing a permanent spot atop every taxicab in America for the next nine years and counting.
Amid the swirl, the musical’s plot remains a mystery to everyone but the 30 million people who have gone to see it. The trailer for this week’s much-anticipated movie adaptation doesn’t shed much light on this troubling issue, except that 1) it involves a wedding, and 2) a bunch of people in white dresses spend most of the film singing ABBA songs on the beach. So as a public service, based on these facts and my own knowledge of ABBA’s music, I’ve tried my best to cobble together a synopsis, song by song.
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Media travelogues, reporting in every two weeks.
Episodes viewed: “The Conscience of the King,” “Balance of Terror,” “Shore Leave,” “The Galileo Seven,” “The Squire of Gothos,” “Arena,” “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” “Court Martial,” “The Return of the Archons,” “Space Seed.”
Star Trek portrays a future in which America has taken over space, albeit a very miniscule sliver of it. Though it took another world war and a new technological Dark Age to get there, by the 23rd century American democracy has crawled from the ashes to claim its rule. A new, interstellar United Nations has come into being in the form of the United Federation of Planets, a tightly organized military-industrial complex conveniently, and comfortably, headquartered in San Francisco. Life is peachy.
The acclaimed reboot of Battlestar Galactica is hailed for presenting the cosmos as the dark, hostile wasteland that it probably actually is – a fresh perspective that has birthed the next generation of Trek naysayers. But I say piffle – despite all of the technobabble, Trek isn’t really about space. It’s a moral play with our galactic destiny as a backdrop, using humanity’s newfound peace as a means to examine how it purged its darker elements, and to unearth ones that still exist beneath the surface.
And what better way to do that than with a smorgasbord of awesome villains?
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Letters - making the world a better place.
Arnold: I’ll admit it, I was one of the naysayers when you rose to the top of the celebrity heap to topple Gray Davis, but as governor, you’ve proven more than meets the eye. Sure, your administration borrows and spends as if it were run by those filthy liberals, but at least you’ve shown a willingness to stick it to your party, your president, and your Humvee on a number of key environmental issues. But I’ve seen that gleam in your eye – you’re hungry for the reality that once was.
Aaron: Gotta say, I’ve grown weary of your unwillingness to diversify your style ever since you left The West Wing to rot in a centrist haze. You’re a spirited artist with a lot to say and the funding to say it, but you’ve endured a stunningly swift fall from grace. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip wallowed in the late-night clichés it set out to subvert, and Charlie Wilson’s War nabbed some good press, but most people took note of Tom Hanks’ hair and left it at that. But I’m convinced that you’ve still got the fire in you.
I have chosen to address you both for one reason: American action filmmaking is in peril, and you, together, can save it.
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Media travelogues, reporting in every two weeks.
Episodes viewed: “The Enemy Within,” “Mudd’s Women,” “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, “Miri,” “Dagger of the Mind,” “The Corbomite Maneuver,” “The Menagerie (Parts 1 and 2)”
Gene Roddenberry was a man on a utopian quest. The Trek patriarch saw the blood of men during WWII’s Guadalcanal campaign and climbed to the level of sergeant in the Los Angeles Police Department – experiences that gave him an unclouded look at the human spirit’s darker side. When he established himself as a writer and conceived his masterpiece, he built upon this theme, envisioning a world in which the peoples of Earth had achieved balance, using space exploration to better themselves as well as those they encounter.
But for some reason, even in stardate 2712.4, women’s rights were still firmly grounded in the 1960’s.
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Media travelogues, reporting in every two weeks.
Episodes viewed: “The Cage,” “The Man Trap,” “Charlie X,” “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” “The Naked Time”
The most intimidating aspect of tackling the original Trek is that it’s not a series bent on setting and obeying rules. It’s essentially the Greek mythology of the franchise – the characters are often reckless and deeply flawed, serving more as a moral base for the viewer than as an example to be acknowledged and followed. The Zeus of the USS Enterprise, Captain James T. Kirk is a man undeniably deserving of respect – but still one who can, and does, succumb to the same passions and foibles that all humans do.
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Letters - making the world a better place.
Yo Joe,
If you’ve been kicking back on your ottoman and living your life like a free man, lemonade and calabrese, I don’t mean to bug you, but where you been, man? Cinema’s been so glum without you.
I feel you, Joe – I can understand why you cast off the Tinseltown shackles. You think you’ve become a stereotype – that Hollywood money men saw one character trait that they could exploit in a budding talent and siphoned the well until it was parched. Hell, your roles basically fall into three subcategories:
