Haibane.info

Category: Movies and Television

  • Star Trek: TNG buffoonery

    Oh man, this is funny. via Wil Wheaton.

  • Star Trek Barbies

    I am almost speechless.

    Star Trek Barbie Dolls
    Star Trek Barbie Dolls

    So, when does the Seven of Nine barbie come out? Just asking.

    (actually, Wil Wheaton should be all over this… and what about Ensign Lefler?)

    UPDATE – close-ups.

  • Starbuck whines

    Sheesh man, this whining is so emasculating!

    There was a time, I know I was there, when men were men, women were women and sometimes a cigar was just a good smoke. But 40 years of feminism have taken their toll. The war against masculinity has been won. Everything has turned into its opposite, so that what was once flirting and smoking is now sexual harassment and criminal. And everyone is more lonely and miserable as a result.
    …
    “Re-imagining”, they call it. “Un-imagining” is more accurate. To take what once was and twist it into what never was intended. So that a television show based on hope, spiritual faith and family is un-imagined and regurgitated as a show of despair, sexual violence and family dysfunction. To better reflect the times of ambiguous morality in which we live, one would assume. A show in which the aliens (Cylons) are justified in their desire to destroy human civilization, one would assume. Indeed, let us not say who the good guys are and who the bad are. That is being “judgmental,” taking sides, and that kind of (simplistic) thinking went out with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and Kathryn Hepburn and John Wayne and, well, the original “Battlestar Galactica.”

    I kind of pity poor Dirk Benedict. He sounds like Grandpa Simpson. I think, however, that his version of Starbuck would have found a lot to like about the new BSG, because at its core, it’s about strong people who keep going in the face of overwhelming odds, about the importance of principle and honor, and a basic embrace of the essence of being human. What makes BSG special is that it does so in classic science fiction style, by using the strange and unfamiliar as foil to probe the familiar and known. How better to answer the question of, what makes us human, then by having machines ask it?

    One gets the feeling that Dirk never read any (Philip K) Dick. The Matrix, Blade Runner, even good ol’ Spock the Vulcan… all of that goes over his head, and he is left fuming, impotently, about ambiguous moralities. Science fiction is for grown-ups. The old Galactica series was for kids.

    (good as BSG is, though, Firefly still holds the edge. I wonder what sort of conniptions that show would send Dirk into?)

    (via Steven)

  • The Fifth Cylon revealed

    Now we know who the 13th Tribe was, what happened to Starbuck (mostly), closure for the Lee-Dee romance, and of course the identity of the Fifth Cylon. Spoilers ahead!

    (more…)

  • Asimov’s Foundation – the movie

    Foundation on the big screen? Seems that Roland Emmerich will be directing; that’s cool with me, I loved Stargate, but the real question is who will be writing the screenplay? The Will Smith treatment of I, Robot was a good movie, but was not remotely an Asimovian story. I’ll stick with polite skepticism for now, but I am willing to be pleasantly surprised.

  • the Cycle of Time: cylons and humanity

    Let’s review for a moment the big picture so far.

    In Galactica, Kobol is the ancestral homeworld of humanity. 2000 years prior to the series, 12 tribes left Kobol and founded the 12 Colonies. 2000 years prior to that (ie, 4000 years previous), a 13th tribe left Kobol to find a mythical planet named Earth. Each of the original 12 tribes corresponds to a sign of the Zodiac. 400 years after the 13th tribe left (1600 years prior to the Exodus, 3600 years prior to the events in the series), the oracle of Pythia recorded her famous prophecy about the exile and rebirth of humanity, some of which is written in past tense.

    Kobol was ruled by the Lords of Kobol, which correspond to the Greek and Roman gods of mythology. These Lords were apart from humanity, but not immortal or super-natural, and could also die (for example, Athena committed suicide after the Exodus of the 12 tribes).

    It is also known that there was one Lord of Kobol, known as the “Jealous God” and also as the one whose “Name must not be spoken“, who desired to be elevated above the other gods. This god’s ambition is what precipitated civil war on Kobol and led to the Exodus of the 12 tribes.

    As Galactica retraces the steps of humanity, they discover Kobol, abandoned 2000 years previous. Moving onwards, guided by the Book of Pythia, they discover progressively older artifacts – a beacon in the Lion’s Head nebula dated 3000 years ago, and then the Temple of Five dated 4000 years ago.

    What follows is my theory about the above, and the origins of Cylons and humanity. Since it is ridiculously spoiler-esque, and discussion of it will also be spoiler-laden by necessity, I am putting it below the fold. The key, however, is simply this: The Cycle of Time.

    “If you believe in the gods, then you believe in the cycle of time that we are all playing our parts in a story that is told again, and again, and again throughout eternity” (Kobol’s Last Gleaming, Part I).

    Or, as it is said in the Pythian prophecy, “All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.” In addition, the very first line of the Sacred Scrolls states, “Life here began out there“. These broad concepts are the key to answering downstream questions such as Who are the Final Five and the identity of the Final Cylon.

    (more…)

  • Northern Exposure – Light

    This, in a nutshell, is why i loved that show.

    Merry Christmas, everyone!

  • Felix Gaeta – the Face of the Enemy?

    There’s a new 10-part series of weekly webisodes at scifi.com featuring Lt. Felix Gaeta at scifi.com beginning today. The title of the series is “The Face of the Enemy” and given my earlier speculation on the identity of the final cylon, I am going to have fun mining these webeps for more data to support my theory 🙂

    There’s a brief summary of the overall plot of the webeps at io9. Some minor commentary of my own below the fold… (more…)

  • The Simpsons meet the muslims

    Earlier I mentioned the Arabic-ized The Simpsons starring Omar Shamsoon. Now the Simpsons have introduced a token muslim family, as well as engaged in some Apple bashing. Yet despite this high convergence with my blog topic pastimes, I was less than impressed. I was particularly disappointed that they didn’t make more of the fact that Dan Castalleneta, the voice of Homer, also voiced the Genie in Aladdin, for Homer’s magic carpet ride dream sequence.

    There’s sldo some discussion of the episode over at Talk Islam worth checking out.

  • May 2009 – Trek reboots

    I can’t help myself. I don’t want to repeat my anticipation/disappointment cycle of Episode I but this is hitting all the right buttons for me.

    And, the bad guys are Romulans. They are so much more interesting than Klingons… but speaking of Klingons, they also are rumored to be done right – without foreheads. As Worf said, “We don’t speak of it.”