As a courtesy and reminder, tonight marks the premiere of the fourth and penultimate season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, as we begin the long voyage towards what may very well be the final days of this current Trek era. When the opportunity permits itself, I shall endeavor to give the season a watch and offer some brief thoughts, but I will probably reserve judgment until the season is over.
For now, let us all just be fans and enjoy the show.
On a related note, if you haven’t gotten a chance to do so, I would suggest giving IDW’s Star Trek: The Last Starship a shot. The premise is a little wild for some people’s tastes, but it is genuinely one of the few pieces of Star Trek media produced in the past decade that’s pretty damned good. Tells a good story, has some interesting characters and plotpoints, the art has been a constant highlight, whether it was the original artist or the one they’ve got doing the issues now. Good stuff. Highly recommended. The one comic that’s keeping my interest throughout and not letting me down… which is a rarity these days.
I know that I said I wouldn’t touch on this anymore until something concrete comes out of the whole Doctor Who tendering business, but sometimes, I can’t help but ask questions that I know I’ll never get answers to… but gosh darn it, I’m going to give it a shot here.
Why can’t Marble Mouth Davies shut the fuck up? Why does he continue to insist that he did a good job on his second tenure on the series and regrets nothing? Why does he continue to court controversy among the fanbase who rightfully criticized his flaky body of work in these past two years and dismiss them as “hate-filled” or “toxic?” Why does he continue to deflect any and all blame for the franchise being in this situation in the first place?
Okay, so you take umbrage in the fact that people claim Doctor Who has been cancelled when, in fact, it’s on tender. Okay, fine. Technically speaking, you are correct. Doctor Who is not cancelled. You did not plunge the franchise to its lowest lows and there will, in fact, be a Christmas special later this year that you will indeed produce to resolve your stupid little cliffhanger that you apparently didn’t have a script for… which, again, runs contrary to claims made in the past.
So for you to get any semblance of free pass here, the tender process would have to be quick, a suitor would be found to foot the bill and begin production, and then the Christmas special will be back on schedule, right?
Right?
Look, I’ve said my piece on this whole tender business last month and I’m not going to repeat myself here. I will also clarify that, yes, there is no Christmas special this year, but the BBC is looking to find someone – anyone – who is willing to pick up the pieces left behind by Marble Mouth over there and bring forth the next glorious age of Doctor Who. I will also remind people that this process can (and possibly will) take years and anyone who thinks that everything will be up and about by next year can take a long walk off the deep end.
Reality is that Doctor Who is off the air. It’s going to be off the air indefinitely. It’s going to be a good, long while until we see that blue box on new adventures. And yes, it’s probably a good thing that there’s going to be a long pause… but the reality is that we wouldn’t be in this situation of getting a pause if this latest relaunch had been a success, but it hasn’t and here we are. And people can point to “woke this” or “DEI that” or whatever the case may be. But sometimes, the simplest explanation worked best.
The show failed because THE SHOW SUCKED.
End of story.
There’s something to be said about letting people think you the fool and then opening your mouth to remove all doubt. RTD ought to take that lesson to heart. Every time he speaks on the matter, it becomes even more pathetic.
NOW… I can retire that banner in peace.
Hopefully, next time we talk about Doctor Who ’round these parts, it’ll be something positive for once. I’m tired of writing about bad news. Maybe I should take Stephen Moffat’s advice and watch the old stuff again. There’s plenty to go around.
This week may have been one of the most productive weeks as far as progress in the video archive is concerned. Honestly, I’m shocked by how much was done this past week alone, which I didn’t think was possible. Regardless, I’ve got a report on the matter.
The 2012 and 2015 video reviews have been uploaded to Youtube in their remastered states… by which I mean, new title cards and some slight edits to improve on some things. But otherwise, these are the same reviews that were posted in their respective years. I’ve also re-uploaded some old Dailymotion material, including a few wrestling game matches and some of the old video specials… although these had to be edited down to avoid content claims.
Right now, I’ve started work on getting the 2013 and 2014 reviews up and about, although this will be slow going because a lot of the raw project files have degraded to such a degree that they’ve become unusable. The original VEGAS file still works, but the footage used has pretty much crapped out. So I’m either left to go back and re-rip the original footage used in the first place, or I’m going to have to replace it with new footage… either way, it’s going to require some work. (And for curious parties, this is the same problem that pretty much curtailed the restoration of the vintage commentaries.)
In any event, the priority is to replace the old Dailymotion embeds with fresh Youtube ones and that boils down to a handful of reviews at most. Once those are done, the rest will eventually follow. If everything works out in such a way that we can get the remaining reviews online before the year’s up, fantastic. But I also don’t want this project to get in the way of getting fresh material up here too, which would be preferable. Once the reviews are done, I’ll see about getting some of the other DM-exclusive stuff over in some form or fashion. Baby steps, though…
That said, there is some fun stuff planned in the months ahead. It’s going to be lightweight for the summer months, but hopefully September will be when things kick off in a huge way. I’ve already recorded a couple things specifically for the occasion and there’s at least two to three more big projects in the works that I’m hoping to get ready before the busy season hits again.
I’ll see about doing one of these things again in a couple months. Of course, any further updates will be listed in the monthly State Of The Blog updates at the beginning of each month. Until then…
Ten years ago, on this very day, the third Ghostbusters movie premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre a week before it saw release in theaters everywhere…
Oh, no… I’m not talking about Afterlife, that came out years later.
I’m referring to the one directed by Paul Feig. The one with the all-female cast.
The divisive one.
Ten years ago, I wrote a bit on this thing shortly before this saw release and you can read that here if you’d like. But to make a long story short, I saw the trailer they put out for this thing, I thought it sucked, and I moved on with my life. It didn’t look like a good movie, the comedy bits were painfully unfunny, and there was no reason for me to waste time or money on something that I know I’m not going to like. How can I know this based on the trailer? Because the trailer is supposed to sell you the movie. If it convinces you to watch the movie, great. The trailer convinced me that I wouldn’t like this movie based on the comedy.
Then I heard the online noise because people were upset at the all-female cast and that became a blanket statement of “we don’t want men watching this thing.” Never mind that most fans were upset that they weren’t getting a third Ghostbusters movie with the original cast – which is what they wanted all these years and they somewhat got that with Afterlife. James Rolfe made a video illustrating this very point and the media nailed him hard because they thought “he didn’t want no women in Ghostbusters” or something stupid like that. Noted “alleged” comedian Patton Oswald made a scene over this without having seen the video, which showed how much of a tool he turned out to be.
And so when I heard that bit about not wanting any white men to watch, I decided, “You know what? If you don’t want me to watch, I will not watch.” Not that I needed the help – the trailer more than convinced me that this wouldn’t be worth my time – but if the people making this film do not want me to watch this film, then I won’t. And it became one of the few films on this list that I absolutely will not watch under any circumstances. Whatever curiosity I might have had or could have had for this film were easily sated with reviews from other content creators and most importantly, word of mouth from trusted folks who saw the film and flat out told me, “Yeah, this movie sucks. Go watch Bridesmaid instead.”
And then the movie bombed and the people involved blame white men for not watching the movie… you know, the same white men they wanted nothing to do with in the first place and said as much.
Ten years have passed and we’ve seen other films fall into the same trap; they feature a female protagonist, they say stupid things about not wanting male audiences, the male audiences don’t show up, the movie bombs, and they cry foul rather than admit they fucked up. Hollywood had adopted the wrestling mentality of blaming the audience for their own failings rather than admit that they’ve put out a shit product and alienated a portion of their paying audiences. Tell that audience to fuck off and they’d be more than happy to do so.
Ten years later and I still haven’t seen the movie. No real desire or incentive to do so. I did (and still do) feel bad for the cast who just wanted to make a good film and for a time, they did embrace the roles, taking some photos with sick children and things of that nature. I thought it cool that they did stuff like that and only wished that they had a better movie. Like I said back then, if they had just done a movie that was similar in tone to the original movie with the new cast, I would have been fine with that. I probably would have given it a watch on Netflix or whatever.
This thing, however? Not so much… and it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal because how many movies have I skipped out on because I’ve seen trailers and/or commercials for these things and decided it’s not for me? There’s quite a few. I lost count. And maybe some day, if it popped up on a streamer and I had nothing better to do, I’d figured… sure, why not? But since they told me flat out that they don’t want me watching their film… again, I’m more than happy to oblige if that’s how you feel about it. I’ve got plenty of other stuff I can watch or occupy my time with.
Because if you’re not going to value me as a viewer or potential customer, why should I reward you with my time and money? And unfortunately, that would be a question I find myself asking a lot of people these days. What happened to the days where humanity strived to be better? Or is that just a catchphrase we put on a T-shirt for ten bucks a pop at Walmart?
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Lo and behold, another Power Rangers comic review and so soon after the last one since this is the most recent release. Some mild spoilers on this one, kids, but much of my criticisms of the previous comic can also apply to this one. Too much of a tease and leaving me with more questions than I would care for.
On July 7th, 1996, former WWF Champion and beloved wrestling superhero Hulk Hogan did the unthinkable and turned his back on the fans, aligning with the invading Outsiders at the Bash At The Beach. He then proceeded to cut a scathing promo telling the fans who turned their backs on him to stick it and declare his new alliance with Scott Hall and Kevin Nash to be the New World Organization Order of professional wrestling, brother.
So 30 years ago, we had the birth of the nWo. A lot of people want to make a big deal of Austin 3:16 being uttered for the first time last month, but it took a while for the Stone Cold train to really get rolling and only then would that phrase grace a T-Shirt that would outsell everything else on the market.
But before that T-Shirt came to pass, there was the nWo.
And the nWo was a big deal. Even someone like me who only had the most peripheral exposure to wrestling knew what an nWo was. It was the first thing I heard most about. It was the first shirt that I’ve seen most kids wear back in the day. And it was pretty much the talk of the town until Steve Austin REALLY started getting big the following year… then everyone was talking about Stone Stunners and stuff like that.
There has been some debate as to whether Bobby Heenan (who was doing color commentary for the show) spoiled the Hogan turn when he openly asked “Whose side is he on?” in regards to Hogan showing up to seemingly save the day during the main event. Some folks argue that the line gave away the turn and in a way, I could almost see it. It’s a bit of a tell, a hint of doubt. You don’t want anyone to doubt Hogan. And had it been any of the other commentators, then yeah, I’d say it would be a giveaway because why would they doubt Hogan as anything but the paragon of virtue?
You know who have cause to doubt Hogan?
Bobby Heenan.
Anyone who has watched Hulk Hogan in WWF or even in WCW knew that there was one dissenting voice who rallied against everything Hogan did. During the height of the Rock N Wrestling era, it was Jesse Venture. In the 90s, it was Bobby Heenan. The heel announcer who rooted for the bad guys and poked fun at the good guys. And there was no good guy that Heenan had a hate boner for than Hulk Hogan… and for good reason. He managed some top challengers to Hogan’s WWF title, including King Kong Bundy and Andre The Giant. Even back in the AWA days, Heenan was seconding reigning champion Nick Bockwinkel during his defenses against a young upstart challenger named – you guessed it – Hulk Hogan.
Bobby Heenan has every reason to doubt Hogan. He doesn’t like the guy. He doesn’t trust the guy. Him not being completely on board with him saving the day, I can buy that. Even Dusty Rhodes reacted incredulously at the comment, shutting Heenan down. Heenan questioning Hogan based on their past history? Yeah, that’s not a tell. That’s a perfectly logical reaction.
So in recent years, WWE edited the line out from replays and Heenan is now silent during the whole deal. So now that we fixed the offending line, everything is a-okay and the turn is more of a surprise, right?
Well, of course, it isn’t.
First off, deleting a line doesn’t preserve the surprise. It makes it more obvious that something isn’t up. Heenan being silent is like… “Hey, he knows more than he’s letting on.” THAT’s more of a tell than anything.
And also… what’s the point of removing a line to preserve a turn that everyone knows is coming because it happened THIRTY FUCKING YEARS AGO?
It’s one thing to fix a flubbed move during a pre-tape or a naughty bit during a replay… but one line removed because… reasons? Dude, now you’ve made it more obvious. And for what? A clip that most people aren’t going to see in their entirety anyway? Does it really matter whether that line is kept?
Anyway, what does it matter? I still have the show on VHS. It still works. Maybe one day, I transfer it to DVD and then to media box.
