Are you a REVOLUTION fan? After reading what’s below, all we can say to that is, “Why?”
By which we mean, “Don’t you realize the cost, man?! Don’t you know?!”
by Mark LeeAs the first season of NBC’s post-apocalyptic drama Revolution came to an end, I really wanted to write a post about how the show reflects Hobbesian social theory and demonstrates the fragility of our modern, technology-dependent society.
by John OstranderThe Beeb announced this week that Matt Smith, the current actor playing the Doctor on Doctor Who, its long running (50 years!) SF series, will be leaving the show with the Christmas Special this year. For those of you living outside the Whovian time-space continuum, the Doctor is a time traveling alien who can regenerate entirely at points of mortality. Different face, different body, largely different personality, completely different actor in the role. They’ve done this eleven times so far so, in general, they have the procedure down pat.
I’ve seen some interesting speculations as to who will be the next Doctor. While usually the actor cast as the Doctor is not so well known, a names of a lot of well known actors are being currently tossed around by that mysterious series of tubes running underground known as the Internet. Hugh Laurie, best known as Doctor House here in America was one name mentioned and I think he would be very highly entertaining. I’ve seen Mr. Laurie in any number of different roles and he was marvelous in all of them. I don’t think the Beeb can afford his salary but it’s still interesting to think what might happen.
I read an interview where Helen Mirren had voiced a desire to the play the Doctor. Could the Doctor change into a woman? In the first episode that Neil Gaiman wrote for Doctor Who, “The Doctor’s Wife”, the Doctor mentions in passing a fellow time-lord who did regenerate into a woman so we have to take it as a possibility. Dame Helen Mirren has done a switched character before when she played Prospera, a female version of the character Prospero, in Julie Taymor’s movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. If she could do that, I have a feeling she could do the Doctor with no problem.
About a week and a half ago, the lovely and talented Peggy Bechko wrote a blog article that we picked up and re-posted here at TVWriter™ in which answered the oft-asked question, “Where do you write?”
Until I read that, I had no idea that readers/viewers/fans cared where writers did their writing. I mean, I’ve sure never cared where other people write, or eat, or sleep, or have sex, or satisfy any of their other basic needs in life.
And as soon as that reaction equating writing to the basic needs of life sprang into my consciousness I realized that of course I should care about where writers write, and I should share it too. Because if, like me, you’re one of those people for whom writing is an absolute necessity, a primal urge that can’t be contained, you need all the knowledge you can get about how to best, um, satisfy that urge.
Bad news, fans of Rod Serling, excellence in television, and just plain coherent storytelling. Looks like J.J. Abrams, Master of the Not Fully Thought Through Obvious in Film and its partner, Not Full Thought Through Muddiness in TV, has made a deal with Rod Serling’s estate to turn Rod’s unproduced screenplay, THE STOPS ALONG THE WAY, into a TV mini-series.
To us, this is pathetic. Like entrusting a TV version of any Shakespeare play to whatever moron it is who created/writes/produces HOT IN CLEVELAND.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Yesterday we brought you Herbie J. Pilato’s take on STAR TREK: INTO THE DARKNESS. But you know how we hate being harsh. So we turned to our own Kathy Fuller for a whole ‘nuther viewpoint. Didn’t exactly get it, but we tried.
Twenty-one years ago when I met my husband, little did I know that there were strings attached. Their names were Kirk, Spock, Picard, Riker, Data, Sisko, Odo…you get the picture.
Star Trek was woven into the fabric of my life by virtue of syndication, movies, dvd’s, and a son who also possessed the Star Trek fan gene. But over the twenty-one years of our relationship, there became a dearth of new Star Trek material. Thank God JJ Abrams & Co. revitalized the franchise, because I don’t think I could spend the next two decades watching the same reruns fifty gazillion times, all in the pursuit of marital happiness.