TV Talk - Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Hmm... seems messianic with less emphasis on the "messi".

For my final post this month, I might as well go out with a bang. It’s back to Battlestar Galactica for this one. I had been wanting to finish off the show with Season 4, but I couldn’t find the dang DVD set for a while. Thankfully, I found them. It’s literally been 10 years since I’ve ever watched this season especially the final episodes. It felt like the end to something special especially since I was getting ready for my final semester of college. Season 4 of BSG was split between 2008 and 2009. While it kind of started with the movie, Razor, it officially didn’t start until April 2008. 10 episodes aired in 2008 while another 10 aired in 2009. I was pretty much glued to the set for the final season.

So… how do I talk about this without spoiling the fact that Kara Thrace came back from the dead in Season 3? Oh… well, Starbuck, who unfortunately left us in the middle of Season 3, suddenly shows up in a nebula where the fleet is surrounded by Cylons. Also, four of the final five Cylon models are revealed, and it is a shock to them and the audience. I’ll won’t spoil them, though. Let’s just say it’s all a a bit of a mess at the end of Season 3. The fleet was still in shock over Baltar’s trial, and it’s revealed that Roslin’s cancer is back.

Season 4 picks up with what happened and rolls with it. Kara isn’t trusted at first, but she’s then sent out with others since she may know where Earth is. Lee accepts a new role in the fleet’s government. The newly revealed Cylons do what they can with their new knowledge. Also, Gaius Baltar gets even weirder. We even get a Cylon civil war that causes some models to possibly help humanity. To keep from spoiling more, the fleet do reach their destination, but it’s far from over. Not only do they have to deal with internal matters, there’s still the threat of the Cylons.

Random Pictures of the Month - 12 Things Battlestar Galactica Has Taught Me

Well, I'm at the end of my journey of looking at the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. Since I haven't done this section in quite a while, I thought I'd just post some pics and some lessons that BSG taught me. These may or may not be real lessons, but you never know.

1. Sometimes, fan service is good. Seriously, Richard Hatch (RIP) knocked the role of Tom Zarek out of the park.

2. Don't tick off the really nice ones especially when they've gone through some stuff. That Mutiny arc was awesome.

3. If this show and some personal experience has taught me, blondes can sometimes be trouble.

Trade Tales! - Hawkworld

Next up is a return to the DC Universe. This time, I’m looking at a character I’m not a big fan of: Hawkman. I don’t think he’s a lame character even though his mask is sometimes weird. All I know about the character is that he is pretty screwed up continuity-wise. And I thought Superman’s continuity  had issues!  I know that Carter Hall (or Katar Hol, whatever floats your boat) has gone through changes over the years. I even remember running across the confusion in Zero Hour, a crossover that was supposed to end the confusion. Spoilers… It apparently didn’t and this story here is kind of what started it.

A few months back, I was looking through some cheap trade paperbacks. I came across Hawkworld, a three-issue prestige miniseries written and drawn by Tim Truman. I had heard about the story, though I may had been confusing it with the series that spun out of it. Either way, the artwork looked nice, so I decided to pick it up. The miniseries was released in 1989, and it was supposed to be a total reboot of the character in the same way Man of Steel was to Superman. Truman, who has done a lot of work, wrote and penciled the mini. Inks were done by Enrique Alcatena and colors were done by Sam Parsons.

Movie Talk - The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Next up is a quick look at a franchise I’ve sometimes talked about here: the Terminator franchise. Yeah, I’m jumping on the Terminator bandwagon since that new trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate was released. I thought it looked fine, but I want to see more before I make my decision on it. We’ve been burned before with this franchise, so I can’t blame fans for sitting this one out. Thankfully, I’m sitting the possibly “meh” entries out for this post. Today, it’s just the first two movies: The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

T2 is what introduced me to the franchise. I know I’ve seen it on TV plenty of times. I even rented it as a kid, though I never got to watch it unfiltered. In fact, I think this is the first time I’ve seen it without it being edited for TV. I didn’t see the first movie until a few years later on TV as well. Since I had the time, I decided to watch them over the weekend. I have T2 on DVD while the first movie was relegated to Netflix. It’s also the first time that I’ve seen the extended edition for T2.

Weird Star Trek Episodes - Endgame aka "All Good Things... Version 2.0"

Young Janeway: Are our uniforms going to look that bad?

Old Janeway: Well... yes. If there's one bad thing "All Good Things..." brought into existence, it's this crappy uniform!

All this talk about the Game of Thrones final episode has got me thinking about other final episodes. Last episodes tend to range from “what the heck was that crap” to “that was pretty good.” Even some of the best shows end up having a bad ending. I’ve never watched Dexter, but that’s one that gets thrown around a lot. Sci-fi franchises have also felt this. For every “All Good Things…,” you’ll get a “These are the Voyages….” This stuff just tends to be random. Then, there are the ones that just “whelm” you. They’re not good nor or are they bad. In Star Trek’s case: it’s one thing: “Endgame.”

No, this doesn’t involve Captain Janeway flinging Mjolnir at the Borg Queen because that would be too cool. “Endgame” was the series finale for Star Trek: Voyager and it aired May 21, 2001. At this point, I was catching up with the show through reruns on UPN. We only had the station for about a year, so I didn’t start watching VOY properly until the end of the sixth season. We even got a few surprises in the finale like Alice Krige reprising her role as the Borg Queen. I know I liked this back when I first saw it, but why did have a whelming feeling when I saw this a couple of years ago?

Trek Novels - Star Trek: The Captain's Table Book 4 - Fire Ship

“Today’s post is the start at a look at an anthology series that was released throughout 1998 called 'The Captain’s Table.' The basic premise is that there is a special bar called The Captain’s Table and captains of all sorts come and relax for a bit. Six books looked at the different captains at that time… I’m going to try to look each book during the next few months…” 

So... I really got behind on this one. I think I started reading it sometime last year, but other stuff got in the way. Next, I lost track of the dang thing. When I finally got around to finishing it, let's just say that  it took longer than I thought it would take. So, Game of Thrones has come to an end. While I’ve only seen one episode and bits and pieces, I’ve enjoyed all the furor that’s been said about the last season. It’s even making me want to revisit something that’s related to the book I’m talking about today. I’ll probably talk about that later this week, though. I’m still not that interested in seeing more  GOT especially since I have a lot of other things I want to see.

I haven’t read too many Voyager novels. While I do have a couple, I haven’t gotten to them yet. Today’s pick is Fire Ship from The Captain’s Table collection. As you can tell by the cover, it’s all about Captain Kathryn Janeway, someone who’s not exactly one of my favorite characters. I think I know why it took so long to get to this one. The book is written by Diane Carey, who I almost got mistaken for Diane Duane, another Trek novelist. Carey’s done quite a few Trek novels, and some were even novelizations of episodes. It’s not stated when it takes place, but I looked online and it says that it takes place right before the episodes, “Year of Hell.”

Random Thoughts On... The Netflix Godzilla Anime Trilogy

In a couple of weeks, the G-Man will be returning to theatres. Yeah, it took five years, but Legendary Pictures has finally gotten another Godzilla movie out. From what I’ve seen and heard, this looks like it’ll be fun especially since a certain King will grace its head(s) once again. For this month, I was originally going to do a list of my favorite Godzilla films. I haven’t seen them all, so that’s gotta wait. Yes, I’m such a bad Godzilla fan. Instead of that, I decided to revisit and finish the anime Godzilla trilogy on Netflix. I can safely say that it’s… okay?

Alright, let me start off at the beginning. Toho Co., the ones behind the Godzilla movies, announced that they were going to do a trilogy of animated Godzilla movies. Toho Animation worked along with Polygon Pictures to bring these movies to life. The first movie, Planet of the Monsters, was released in 2017. Its sequel, City on the Edge of Battle, was released in 2018. The final movie, The Planet Eater, was also released in 2018. It didn’t make it to Netflix until 2019, though.

I was moderately interested in the movies. When I found out the first one was on Netflix, I immediately watched it. It took a while for me to get around to the sequel, though. As for The Planet Eater, I actually decided to re-watch the first two movies and it as well this week. I guess I felt I was missing something the first time around with the first two. I’ve also briefly talked about the first two here as well. I wasn’t a big fan of them and now that I’ve finished watching the trilogy,… eh.

Trade Tales! - Serenity: A Shepard's Tale

Next up for the month is a return to the Firefly franchise. Outside of the TV show and movie, I haven’t ingested other Firefly material. I think part of it just has to do with the fact that I got other stuff to do. It is out there if you look. There are novels, Dark Horse Comics has had the license to do stories with most of Joss Whedon’s properties and Firefly is one of them. Whedon’s even been involved with a few. I ended up coming across this somewhere and something about it really struck my fancy: Shepard Book.

Derrial Book (played by the late Ron Glass) was the Serenity’s holy man. He’s a Shepard which is a priest or pastor in the Firefly universe. While he was a man of God, he seemed to do well with the pretty shady crew of the Serenity. Even he had some shades himself especially if you remember his little moment with “kneecaps.” We never found out more since the show got cancelled. When he was brought back for a bit in the movie, he met an unfortunate end. Since he was pretty popular, the Whedons (Joss and Zack) decided to do a graphic novel surrounding his origins.

Serenity: A Shepard’s Tale was released in 2010. Joss provided the plot while Zack handled the story and dialogue. Chris Samnee, who I know from his run on Daredevil, handled the artwork. The colors were done by Dave Stewart. The letterer was Michael Haesler. Finally, the awesome cover art was done by Steve Morris. So, what did this Shepard get up to in his youth?

"It's a Video Game!" - Star Wars: Bounty Hunter

Well, it’s time for the obligatory Star Wars post. Originally, I wanted to revisit and finish Star Wars: the Force Unleashed on the PS3. Then, I suddenly remember this old gem from my teen years. I saw it on Playstation Network and had to play it again. I don’t know what any of us expected when we saw a familiar figure dressed in Mandalorian armor in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. I thought it looked kinda cool, and hey, Jango Fett lived up to that coolness even though he gets beheaded at the end of the movie. Thankfully, that wasn’t the last time we’d seen Boba Fett’s daddy.

Star Wars: Bounty Hunter was a third-person action shooter that was released in 2002, sometime after AOTC was released on video and DVD. It was developed and published by Lucasarts during what was pretty much their zenith. They were churning out all sorts of Star Wars games throughout the 90’s and early 2000’s. While you would get something horrid like the Masters of Teras-Kasi (ugh), you’d also get good games like KOTOR and Jedi Academy. They even got Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett) and Leeanna Walsman (Zam Wessell) to reprise their roles here. We even get Clancy Brown voicing another bounty hunter and Corey Burton doing a pretty good Christopher Lee impression.

Bounty Hunter takes place a decade before the events of AOTC. I don’t know how canon this is, and until someone shows me something else, I’m counting it! Count Dooku puts outs a bounty for Komari Vosa, a Dark Jedi who’s the head of the Bando Gora. Jango Fett and another Mandalorian bounty hunter, Montross (Clancy Brown), answer the call. You pretty much end up going all over the galaxy looking for clues, shooting folk, and taking other bounties along the way. On your journey, you have your friend, Rozzatta, feeding you info. You also run into another bounty hunter named Zam Wessell, “and I definitely see her and Jango’s partnership lasting for a long time…”

Oh yeah... that happened.

TV Talk - Star Trek: Discovery Season 2

Well, it’s that time of the year where I get to gush (?) a bit on sci-fi related stuff. I don’t know where a bounty hunter looking for a rouge Jedi fits on that list, but I can fit it on there, dang it! Before I get to the thing that may have wrecked my wrist, I think it’s time for some more Star Trek.

If I remember correctly, Star Trek: Discovery didn’t start out well. While I liked the first season, I’ll admit that it had some pretty big problems. While you’d think I’d itch and moan about its canonicity (is that a word?), the fact that the suits looked different was the least of its issues. At the end of Season 1, we got an inkling of something cool: the original USS Enterprise (Constellation-class, by the way). Yeah, it was updated a bit, but my baby looked good! During the break, we got more behind-the-scene stuff coming out. Honestly, I mostly blocked most of it out, but the whole thing about the writers was pretty messed up. When it started to air on All Access, I was in for it all especially since they took no breaks this time.

Now this is what I call a remix!

The biggest news that came out of the break was that we’d be seeing some old characters return. It was revealed that Anson Mount would be playing Captain Christopher Pike and that he would be a major part of the series. I had only seen Mount on Inhumans, so I didn’t know what to expect. We also found out that Spock would be around and he would be played by Ethan Peck, the grandson of actor Gregory Peck. I think everyone was worried about this one since we got another one in the iconic role. We also got an inkling that things could start to look more familiar. Did they succeed in making a better season?

So, where has Burnham gotten herself this time?

Season 2 starts off right after the end of Season 1. Since the USS Enterprise is somehow damaged, Capt. Christopher Pike is given temporary control of the USS Discovery. His mission is to investigate seven time anomalies that have recently sprung up across the galaxy. He also reveals to Michael Burnham that her adoptive brother, Spock, has gone on leave for some reason. It gets revealed (pretty early so it really ain’t a spoiler) that Spock is somehow connected to these anomalies and something called “The Red Angel.” We then get a season that searches for answers, displays fan service, makes explosions, tells some dang good stories, gives us an awesome captain in Pike, sticks to the freakin’ landing in the end, and does annoy me in some places. This is a second season Trek, after all.