Tag Archives: tv

The Golden Globes

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Apparently, the Golden Globe awards were presented last night. I didn’t watch. Over the last 10 years, television and movies have mostly lost the battle for my time. There are other things I’d rather do like read, write, and spend time with the family. And besides, award shows were more fun when I lived in L.A.

That said, I noted with delight this morning that Peter Dinklage won for his role in HBOs Game of Thrones. I saw the first two episodes of Game of Thrones before I started racing through the books last year. I suspect that many people like me can picture no one but Peter Dinklage in the role of Tyrion Lannister and that he plays the character perfectly. (Of course, I watched the entire HBO season, despite getting far head in the books.) While the series is excellent (thanks to great writing and acting), Dinklage makes it worth watching, despite the calls on my time. That is why I suspect that when Season 2 comes out, Game of Thrones will be the only show that I am watching. (I’m not watching any shows at the moment and haven’t been since the series finale of Smallville last spring.)

So congratulations to Peter Dinklage, to George R. R. Martin, and to the entire cast and crew of Game of Thrones. Clearly it is still possible to make a show that breaks new ground and sest the bar, rather than the plethora of imitations and remakes that simply try (and usually fail) to reach it.

Thoughts on Star Trek:Enterprise, Season 1

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One advantage (perhaps the only advantage) to being sick the last 5 days is that I’ve had time to race through Season 1 of Star Trek:Enterprise. A few days back I posted my initial thoughts on the show. I really enjoyed the first season, thought it was very well done, but not without some problems. Now that I’ve finished watching the first season, here are some additional thoughts.

  1. I loved the fact that it is a prequel to the rest of the series. There is often a debate about the order in which to watch such series (or read them if they are in book form) but I have always been of the opinion that they are best enjoyed in the order of creation and not the order of the timeline. This is because you get more insights out of the show. Reading Prelude to Foundation, for instance, before any of the other Foundation novels might be enjoyable but you will miss many of the references scattered throughout the novel that make sense in the context of the whole series. The same is true for Enterprise.
  2. I was surprised by the opening sequence of the show–that it didn’t adhere to the normal openings for the show. Apparently, this was quite the fan controversy when the show first came out. I didn’t like the opening–at first. But I’ve got to admit, it grew on me. Despite being a rather sappy song, I grew to like it somewhat. The fact that it was defiant reflects, perhaps unintentionally, John Archer’s own defiant attitudes.
  3. Tucker can sometimes be too hasty in his decisions to interfere with alien worlds. I think this is a flaw in the storytelling, to some extent. Even today, scientists are concerned about the bacteria our probes might carry to other worlds, like Mars for instance. Surely this concern would carry through to the next century and be magnified when considering alien worlds inhabited by intelligent civilizations. T’Pol argues against much of this but her reasoning is no more enlightened then our own present reasoning. This aspect of the show is perhaps its weakest point, but I will acknowledge that it may have been an easy decision for good story-telling, i.e., more drama.
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The television flatline

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More and more, my interest in the standard fare on television has been waning. With the beginning of this season, I think it finally flat-lined. There were always some shows that I enjoyed watching and that I looked forward to. The number of those shows have been steadily going down. I used to love The Office, but I am a few seasons behind on it now, and there is just nothing compelling that makes me want to catch up. Smallville was probably the last show I really made an effort to see.

Shows on premiums channels like HBO and Showtime always seemed of higher quality in my book. But even these shows have finally waned on me. I thought Boardwalk Empire was terrific in its first season last year, but had no interest in watching it this season. Dexter on Showtime has been getting better with each passing season. I watched this year’s season premier with mixed emotions, but have not watched it since.

Don’t get me wrong, I think there are good shows on TV, but I think that my priorities in life have been changing, and in the competition for an ever dwindling supply of time, television is the loser–as it should be. It’s a viscous cycle: I can’t spare the time to watch the shows, and by not watching them I lose interest in watching them. For the first time in a long time, I can’t think of a single show on television, premium or network, that I would be willing to give up my time doing other things to watch–even recorded on DVR.

I am fine with this, and there may come a day when things cycle back around. But television has, to some extent, moved beyond me. Series, especially, have morphed into serials, where you have to have seen all previous episodes to understand the full complications of the current one. It wasn’t always like that. I enjoyed shows like Magnum, P.I. and Diagnosis Murder in part because you could commit to an episode as opposed to an entire season.

So if you ask me if I’ve seen the latest episode of such-and-such, don’t at all be surprised when I tell you no. It’s not that I don’t like TV. But time is precious and the currency of time, they’ve priced themselves out of my market.

Smallville, Superman, and Me

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I just finished watching the series finale of Smallville. I am quite literally out of breath as I type this, so bear with me if my thoughts are a bit jumbled. Please note that there are major spoilers within, so be warned if you haven’t yet seen the series finale.

I was never a comic book guy. I discovered science fiction at the same time I discovered astronomy, somewhere around the age of seven, and I somehow managed to skip over the whole comic book thing. It’s strange when I think about it, because most of my friends in the science fiction world are comic book fans; some of them even wrote for the major superhero comics. I was never really interested for some reason. Having said that, I’d always had a kind of hero-worship for Superman.

When did Superman first enter my consciousness? It’s hard to say. I suspect it might have been one Halloween in the mid-to-late 1970s. Certainly there were costumes (not nearly as elaborate as today’s) of Superman and I must have had some idea that he was a hero. I remember dressing up as Batman one year, complete with Utility Belt, which of course was the only reason to wear the costume in the first place. Toward the end of that decade, I remember very clearly watching episodes of The Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves on TV. I knew the whole opening sequence and can remember pretending to fly around the house with a towel as a cape.

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Initial thoughts on Game of Thrones

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Let me start by saying that generally speaking, I am not a fan of fantasy fiction.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t like it, it simply means that I prefer other things (like science fiction) ahead of fantasy and there is enough science fiction to keep me busy for a lifetime. Also, I have this probably erroneous notion (one that will irritate fantasy writers the world over) that all fantasy stories are essentially retelling of The Lord of the Rings, a book that I thought was phenomenal. In a way, Tolkein ruined it for everyone else by writing the end-all, be-all of fantasy stories..

I’ve tried to read others and they just haven’t taken, and with so little time to spare, I’ve mostly given up trying.

But I was curious about the new HBO series, Game of Thrones, based of course on George R. R. Martin’s series, because no one does series better than HBO. (People: I love Dexter, but as good as it is, it’s just not quite up to the same standards as HBO stuff.) I’ve never read any of the books, but I sat down last Sunday to watch the premier and I was impressed. I sat down to watch last night and I was even more impressed. Great cast, good story so far, intriguing characters, and Peter Dinklage (who was brilliant in The Station Agent, to say nothing of the first two episodes of this new series).

The fact is, the HBO series has be intrigued enough to want to at least attempt reading the first book. I won’t be doing this any time soon as my reading quote is full for the foreseeable future. But it is the first time I’ve felt the urge to read high fantasy in more than two decades. I think this is a roundabout way of saying that I’ve really enjoy and been highly impressed with the HBO series thus far. Everyone involved should be proud of the effort.

Thursday

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Still no NEW SCIENTIST.

Rainy day today.  As planned, Karl, Todd and I headed to the house during lunch.  They helped me bring the grill up from the landing and into the living room (where I can more easily maneuver it toward the kitchen) and then we spent an hour or so playing Wii.  It was a lot of fun.  They wanted to see what Wii Fit was like, so we played some of that, too.

I’m trying to reduce the amount of paper I use and so today, I downloaded a demo copy of DevonThink to see if it will work better for me than paper in collecting notes from reading and other things.  It is supposed to be very good at collecting and organizing this type of information.  How well it actually works depends on how well you can hierarchically organize your information, and last night I got started playing around with it a bit.  If it turns out to be a useful way of capturing and finding information, I’ll end up buying a license for it.  It only works on Macs, but I could end up using it at work also, since I have a Mac there, too (on which I run Parallels).

Last night was TV night.  We lazed around when wegot home.  I watched new episodes of Smallville, The Office, and Life on Mars.

Today’s reading: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (through page 88.

Friday morning

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…or lack thereof. I haven’t done anything in the last week, which has put me somewhat behind in NaNoWriMo. But I intend to get some writing done today and to try and get back on track. It’s quite a hill to climb, but I’m trying to put that out of my mind, and instead, just writing every day. (Plus, next week, I’ve got 10 hours to kill on airplanes, and 10 hours of writing could easily get me back on track.)

I’m still (unofficially) making my way through the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. I say unofficially because I haven’t added it to my reading list. I’m almost through the A’s (in fact, I read the entry for “Astounding Science Fiction” on the train in this morning). That’s about 66 pages into the more than 1,200 page book. But I have to say that I am still enjoying every moment of it.

Payday today, which is always nice. Paid a few bills and transferred the rest to savings.

Looks like 6 or 7 episodes of Smallville left before they run out. Last night’s episode of The Office was the last one that they had. And Heroes (which I still haven’t been keeping up with) is down to it’s last 3 episodes. Maybe I’ll finally be forced to give up TV through sheer circumstance.

We’re going to Jess’s tonight to sit around the fire pit. Hanging out with AJ and Denisse tomorrow.

It was cold out this morning.