Did Truvy Know?

This situation is hard on all the people involved (especially Diane, of course) but our family dogs are not immune to this stress. 

I'll categorize our dogs the same way Dave Barry once did: We have a "large main dog," Truvy, a Cattle Dog-Border Collie mix, and a "small, emergency backup dog," Odie, a Bolognese. 

They are both "our dogs," but if you analyze their behavior, there are definite signs that Odie is Diane's dog and Truvy is my dog. Even though they have both seen times in the past

when Diane is out of town for a few days, I can see some nervousness in them that tells me they know something is up here. 

After "the setback" was already well underway, I happened to remember something a little odd about Truvy. Truvy loves her Mom, no doubt about it. Diane was the one who found Truvy at ReTails, the homeless pet emporium at Washingon Square Mall. She saw in Truvy the kind of friend I could adopt after I'd gone through the grieving process after my beloved terrier-mix, Amos, had died on Christmas Eve, 2010. 

Truvy and I clicked immediately. And once we had her home, Truvy would pace and cry when I left the house, but was generally content if Diane left to go somewhere and I was still home. To this day, if Diane is home and I work late, Truvy will wait often outside on the back porch until I get home, even in some rather nasty weather.  

I recently did some reading about seizure assistance dogs, who have an innate ability to detect if a person is about to have a seizure and warn the person or others about it.

In the last week or 10 days before Diane suffered the aneurysm, Truvy became noticeably more attached to Diane. She would jump up on the bed at bedtime and nuzzle Diane around the face and lick her ears, and Diane would laugh really hard. I admit that for just a moment, I was a bit jealous, but finally I felt glad that Truvy seemed to have finally "evened out" her affections for both of us. 

I now wonder if there was some kind of precursor warning that Truvy picked up on that Diane was about to have a problem. Two weeks ago it would have been absolutely insane for me to have said to Diane, "Gee, Truvy is just lavishing all sorts of affection on you, Dear. Maybe we should get you to ER for a head CT."

But if Truvy steps up her affections toward Diane in the future, it will not be ignored. 

Diane has still not awoken. Each passing day that she does not look into my eyes or squeeze my hand back when I squeeze hers is the new worst day of my life. But her room feels different this morning. The morning sun is shining in her East window. The gloom that has settled over central Indiana seemingly for weeks has broken at least for this morning. 

Diane had basically stopped responding to neurological tests in the last couple of days, but is responding somewhat better today. The last couple of days have been "no good news, no bad news." But she is not experiencing any infections, is breathing on her own. Dr. Helou, who is cautious about building hopes too high, but told me this morning that from the neck down, Diane is in very good shape. There are no signs she will not awaken soon, but we must remain patient while her brain recovers from this struggle. 

That's the trick, isn't it…

The Big Empty

I'd like everyone reading this to think very hard about how intertwined his or her life is with their spouse or significant other, especially if you've been together for several years.

If you had asked me if I realized this last week, I would have shrugged the question off.

"Sure. That's obvious!"

Our small house is full, quite cozy even for two people, and it's kind of a mess right now with all this going on. But it's completely stunning to me how incredibly empty it feels when I see Diane's half finished quilting project on the ironing board. Or the Christmas cards she started to address but didn't quite finish before "the setback" happened. There are also the newly bought bags of flour and sugar sitting on the counter top that were to go into Christmas cookies and treats. 

We were going to put up the Christmas tree this past weekend, but that obviously didn't happen. I'll have to somehow get that done myself, because if, as we all hope, she get's out of the hospital before Christmas, she will be well and truly pissed if she doesn't see a Christmas tree.

By way up an update, a new CT scan Monday PM showed considerable improvement in terms of reduced swelling and reduced amount of blood in the brain. We must still give her more time to wake up, though.

She seems very stable. And I'll take stable. For now. 

Nicks and dings

There seems to be kind of a silent brotherhood among hospital visitors. As I ride up in an elevator, sometimes, even if no words are exchanged, a look will pass between me and another passenger that says, "Yeah, this sucks…"

Diane's hands were swelling a bit (this is normal in situations like this) and it was decided her rings needed to be taken off. One of them had to be cut off. The other (her wedding ring) bears a nick from that cut. 

Now, the way I look at it *as a guy*, the nicks and dings and dents on things (such as my cameras and lenses) can serve as a testament to the work that has been done with them, or of goals met or problems surmounted. 

It will be up to Diane what happens, but I'd be in favor of leaving this nick in place as a monument to the crap we've survived together. But she may want to fix it as a way of putting all this away. I look forward to her decision. 

Diane, my "Marathon Woman"

I'd like to extend heartfelt thanks to all who have expressed their support and sent their prayers for my wife, Diane, as she does battle against the brain aneurysm she suffered last Thursday night.

I'm calling this "the setback." There is no reason at this time to think this is a catastrophe, a tragedy, or a disaster. It's just a setback, rather like a busted water heater or a clutch on a 2004 Hyundai Accent that's had the flyout bearing give out for the second time in a year.

This is going to be a difficult time, and it's a marathon, not a sprint. The way I would describe the current status is this: "The good news is there is no bad news. The bad news is there is no good news." We're kind of battling between the 49 yard lines here, and there's still not a good way to predict any outcomes. Until Diane is awake, we can't really know what damage, *IF ANY*, has been done to her neurological function. After she's awake, she will be delighted to know how many people have shown concern. 

Diane has not been fully awake since before the surgery last Friday afternoon. Right now, we don't really want her to be awake. She needs time for her brain to recover from this insult. 

That's the word the doctors use - insult. And let me tell you, brother, I'm feeling plenty insulted by all this, too.

I've been sending out 6-8 emails a day and responding to texts and phone calls, but I need to try to get this down to about one update per day. While this writing is actually therapeutic for me, I do still have to work in addition to monitoring Diane's condition, so I have to manage my time carefully in this difficult circumstance.

Also, I'm sorry, but I'm old.

I drink buttermilk, I still focus my cameras manually, and I don't do Facebook. I know Facebook is where most social updating is done these days, but that's not where I live.

I dislike Twitter less than I dislike Facebook because, while there is no less idiocy on Twitter, it does at least have the advantage of limiting that idiocy to 140 characters or less

Blogs were the new hotness a few years ago, and I did this blog for a while but drifted away over time. I've decided  to revive this long-dormant blog as a forum to brain-dump and keep all concerned posted on this situation. 

At this time, to monitor Diane's condition, please follow me on Twitter (@drummlines) and I will post short notes and links to or excerpts from new blog posts describing our journey through "the setback." If there is not a new post for a day or two, do not assume there had been a downturn. Like I said, time management is key right now. Also, if I've learned nothing else in the last three days, I've learned that progress will be *slow.* It is a real possibility that on any given day, there will simply be no new news to report.

Thanks again for all the notes and support. I look forward to the opportunity to thank all of you personally in the coming weeks and months.

-- 

Brian Drumm

Netflix feels much better. . .

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"Dumbest idea since New Coke, Qwikster, is aborted. Go, #Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, and be stupid no more. (That was strike 2, by the way.)"

Above is a tweet posted by me on October 10. I'd like to expand on it a bit here.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings did the first smart thing he's done since his ham-handed summer price increase announcement when he smothered the idiotically named Qwikster in it's cradle. My earlier post on this subject highlights only a few of the reasons this was a moronic idea, so I won't rehash.

This move will do little to change the minds of customers and shareholders who have railed against and deserted Netflix in the past few months. But it should at least serve as a pressure dressing on the self-inflicted wound.

Personally, I have thought all along that one DVD at a time and all the streaming I can eat for about 16 bucks a month is a pretty darn good value. My wife, in recovery from a recent surgery, has probably gotten two months of value from the streaming in the last two weeks.

The most concerning thing to me about the lasting effects of this debacle is that Netflix will be handcuffed for quite some time to come in terms of making needed price increases to the streaming service. Sorry to splash a cold bucket of reality on you kids, but for the streaming catalog to grow as it needs to, the cost has got to go up sometime. Did you see what they had to pay for "Mad Men?" That's only one show, and one I'm not even that crazy about. How much do you think it will cost to get most of your favorite shows and mine? Mark my words. Either the price will go up or there will be a tiered subscription service sometime down the line.

Also, I can't imagine ISP's will continue indefinitely to carry all that streaming traffic on their backbones without either bandwidth caps for subscribers or extracting additional fees from Netflix. That's another cost that will eventually have to get passed on to us one way or another.

With Netflix licking it's public relations wounds, the next price increase is surely a lo-o-o-o-ong way off, which is a good thing for us consumers. I just hope Netflix doesn't run itself into the ground because it can't price itself reasonably in the face of pressure from ISP's and pressure from subscribers to not let the streaming library stagnate.

Tarzan and the Lost Empire - Boris Vallejo book cover art

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Recently, I've posted a lot on science fiction, especially on television and particularly Star Trek. I mean for the scope of this blog to be considerably more broad, so today I bring you this item that surfaced recently as I was re-organizing my book collection.

I came across my Tarzan books from the early 1980's. I have 20 of the original 24 in Edgar Rice Burroughs series about the man raised by apes. Actually, until recently, I had 18, but I've picked up two more recent finds on eBay and alibris.com. There are of course numerous publishings of this series, both hardcover and paperback, in the nearly 100 years since the debut of "Tarzan of the Apes" in 1912. My books are one of at least two mass-market paperback editions published by Ballantine from the 1960's thru the early 1980's, and have black-bordered covers and cover art by Neal Adams and Boris Vallejo. (According to an online interview I found with Boris Vallejo, no single artist has ever illustrated the entire Tarzan series book covers.)

While Neal Adams is certainly no slouch and his art has a somewhat more primitive look that seems very appropriate for books about a jungle-dwelling ape man, I always preferred the Vallejo covers. An example is shown below right.

Pictured here is my copy of "Tarzan and the Lost Empire," about Tarzan's encounter with a group of soldiers separated from the Roman Empire who have been living for generations in a state of cultural suspended animation in the isolated African mountains. This was one of several Tarzan tales that featured "lost cities" hidden in the jungle.

The cover art exemplifies the atmospherics that make Vallejo artwork so interesting to me. Note how the background recedes as if into a mist. Even the fists of Tarzan's gorilla friends seem to be sinking into ground fog. This softening of the background seems to be a Vallejo trademark. "Tarzan and the Castaways" shows dust stirred up by an elephant that appears about to charge, while "Tarzan and the Madman" features Tarzan clinging to the neck of a deadly cape bufflalo in a struggle not to be thrown off and trampled, again with a cloud of dust raised by the fracas.

The color palette is warm, as if the scene is lit by the light of sunrise or sunset or perhaps campfires or torches outside the scene. Chiseled musculature, another Vallejo trademark, is strongly defined on both Tarzan and the menacing Roman Warriors. As for the overall book cover design, the black background and strongly contrasting yellow border lend a simple but graphically pleasing design to this series of books.

Also notice this book's cover price. How long has it been since a paperback could be had for a buck-twenty-five?

"Bring out yer dead!"

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Earlier this week, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, recognizing he was in a public relations hole after a recent price increase, doggedly continued to dig deeper by arrogantly "explaining" his past arrogance just before dropping the bomb that the iconic DVD by mail service, along with it's website and billing accounts, would be spun off and given a really stupid name.

Somehow, Hastings managed to shoot himself in the foot even while that very same foot was jammed in his mouth. "You vill use Kvikster and you vill LIKE it."

All this reminds me of a scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," one of the many, MANY movies NOT available for streaming at netflix.com.

In the comedy classic, the "Dead Collector" is pulling a cart door-to-door calling, "Bring out yer dead!" A man brings out his grandfather and places him on the cart, but the sickly old guy protests weakly that he's not yet dead.

Nearly Dead Man: I don't want to go on the cart.

Large Man: Oh, don't be such a baby.

The Dead Collector: I can't take him.

Nearly Dead Man: I feel fine.

Large Man: Oh, do me a favor.

The Dead Collector: I can't.

Large Man: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.

Tech pundits on at least one podcast I've listened to liken the separation of the DVD and streaming businesses to housing one's sickly, nearly dead uncle up in the attic out of sight and mind until he expires.

That Netflix is doing this is understandable. DVD's are dying and Netflix wants to concentrate on the business of the future - streaming. DVD's are already under one layer of obsolescence since the advent of Blu-Ray. But the weak market uptake of this newer format makes even Blu-Ray look pretty diseased and arthritic.

Add to that the fact the DVD side of the Netflix business depends heavily on a healthy United States Postal Service. This once rock-solid government entity now can't seem to get through a fiscal year without racking up a multi-billion dollar loss and having to go hat-in-hand it's governmental parents for a bailout. Continued healthy function of the United States Postal Service will almost certainly depend on immediate positive and constructive action by the United States Congress, an institution famously disinclined toward any action not facilitating immediate short term and shortsighted partisan gain.

This seems similar to when Steve Jobs of Apple unilaterally, and somewhat prematurely, declared the floppy disk dead. History did vindicate his view eventually, but floppies still survived (much as DVD's will) a fair amount of time before succumbing to another now-dead storage medium, the Zip disk.

Netflix clearly thinks the DVD is dead, and I tend to agree. Any physical media I buy comes to me only after an exhaustive and fruitless search for any kind of download option. With music, if iTunes or Amazon doesn't have an mP3 or AAC file available, I sigh heavily and grudgingly schlep to Amazon or Best Buy to purchase a shrink-wrapped plastic disc. Once in hand, the disc is then be shoved into my Mac's optical drive for about 4 minutes and, once it's content was slurped into iTunes, the still shiny round coaster, er, disc, is then be tossed into an out-of-the-way drawer where it molders yet today, never since touched by human hands.

The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: Yes he is.

The DVD: I'm not.

The Dead Collector: He isn't.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.

The DVD: I'm getting better. . .

My wife and I have a modest collection of DVD's that has in the last half-decade only grown by a very few "uber favorites," the ones we definitely want available to watch right when the mood strikes us, such as the Christmas favorites "It's a Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Story," and the Star Wars movies. (And even these few DVD's were purchased used.) For all else, internet streaming or a delivery of a disc by snail mail is more than adequate.

The HUGE downside to this de-integration of the DVD-by-mail/streaming business for both Netflix and it's users is that current search and rating system will now be fragmented, causing the recommendation engine that has surfaced to many great movies I would not have found otherwise to only recommend from the much smaller pool of streaming moves. No longer will I be able to just search for a movie on streaming, and in the all-too-frequent instance that it is not available for streaming, pop it in the DVD queue.

I was really easy-going about the effective rise in the price of the Netflix DVD and streaming package, as it was still several dollars below my "bargain line." But if I now have to deal with two separate entities for DVD's and streaming, especially when one of them has the totally idiotic name of "Qwikster," Netflix MUST expand their streaming options with massive new content deals, and SOON. Otherwise, shedding the DVD business will be a shot squarely in the foot. Once the separation is complete, I will still go to Netflix first for streaming, but instead of staying on the Netflix site to put a DVD in the queue, I will have to leave them to check out other streaming and DVD offerings. There are a few others now, such as iTunes rentals and Amazon prime, and I'm sure the options will grow in the coming months and years. Netflix might have otherwise kept this marketshare longer if DVD's were still were still integral to it's business, thereby giving it more time to become an even more dominant player in streaming.

Maybe Netflix wants to sell the DVD enterprise? If so, why dress it up like a corpse and give it a dippy name?

Perhaps there is an opportunity for a third party to license the Netflix recommendation engine and incorporate it into an aggregator for different DVD and streaming services, similar to what is now done by Boxee.

Whatever happens, all I can say is, "Sorry, Netflix. I'd get that foot looked at by a doctor if I were you. . ."

Hour One out of Fifteen Hundred -- "The Man Trap"

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So, I did a little math today.

There are 79 episodes of the original Star Trek series. I haven't kept track, but I don't think it would exaggerate to say I've seen all of those, on average, six times each. If I channel surf into some episodes, like "Spock's Brain," I am very likely to continue surfing until I find something more intelligent, like maybe "Saved By The Bell." But if I happen on to "The Ultimate Computer" or "The Doomsday Machine," the seat cushions are guaranteed to stay warm for the remainder of the hour.

First part of the math equation: six views times 79 episodes = 474 hours of my life spent watching the original Star Trek.

Now let's consider the later incarnations of the series. I make it 617 episodes of "Next Generation," "Deep Space Nine," "Voyager," and "Enterprise." I simply don't have the reps in on these shows. I gave up on about the last two seasons of Voyager, so score a big fat zero for those. I generally liked Deep Space Nine, but for most of those episodes, once was enough. I used to have a lot of Next Generation on VHS, so I have some reps in on those. My work and life schedule interfered with my seeing Enterprise as much as I would have liked, but I've caught most of them at least once. My ballpark guess is I've averaged 1.5 views of all these episodes, or 925 hours.


474 hours of the original plus 925 for the others, and throw in, say 80 hours or so with the animated series when I was a kid . . . let's just round it out to about 1500 hours of my life in dim rooms with the glint of "Star Trek" reflected in my eyeballs.

Out of those 1500 hours, let's today recognize hour number one. It's pretty hard for most of us to remember what it was like to discover "Star Trek" for the first time. But everyone who was tuned in to their local NBC channel on September 8, 1966, that's 45 years ago today, did just that. They were boldly going where no viewer had gone before.

The episode was "The Man Trap," written by George Clayton Johnson, who had penned a few episodes of "The Twilight Zone," many short stories, and would go on to co-author the novel "Logan's Run." One of my favorite old "Star Trek" books is "The Star Trek Compendium" by Allan Asherman (1981). I have a first edition copy of this book which, unlike later editions, lists the approximate shooting dates of each episode. Episode 12, "Miri" is shown as being filmed in "Late August 1966." It probably could have been through post-production by the September 8 original air date of "The Man Trap."

This gives us an idea of the episodes available for selection as the premier, which would be these:

"The Cage"

"Where No Man Has Gone Before"

"The Corbomite Maneuver"

"Mudd's Women"

"The Enemy Within"

"The Man Trap"

"The Naked Time"

"Charlie X"

"Balance of Terror"

"What are Little Girls Made Of?"

"Dagger of the Mind"

"Miri"

Was there a better choice than "The Man Trap?" Presumably the first two were not considered for the premier since they were "pilot" episodes and had different casting and a different look from the rest. Given the seemingly simpleminded nature of network executives, especially when dealing with the Sci Fi genre, my guess would be "The Man Trap" got the nod because it had a monster in it.

I think all 12 of these early episodes are good, but were I choosing a premier episode, I'd have narrowed it down to "The Corbomite Maneuver," "The Man Trap," and "The Naked Time." And I probably would have selected "The Naked Time." It has an ice planet, suspense, action (thanks in part to Sulu and his fencing foil) and is a story designed to give a good look into the nature of the main characters.

Which one would you have chosen?

Discuss . . .

Top Ten Sci Fi shows of all time - Conclusion

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Holding down the number one spot in the conclusion of the Childhood Recovery Project Top Ten Sci Fi Shows ever. . .

1: Battlestar Galactica (reboot) - Hands down. The. Greatest. Sci Fi. Show. Ever.

Those of you who may have been following this list as it developed know I put "Star Trek" at number two. It had a stranglehold on the top spot until a few short years ago. Once "Galactica" had a couple of seasons under it's belt, it took over the top spot, and no other choice even entered my mind for this position on this list.

Where the 1978 incarnation of "Galactica" was informed by the cold war and featured a faceless "evil empire" as the enemy, the 2004 reboot took it's influence from the "war on terror," and played with the fear that "the enemy could be anyone and they are living among us." This led to a far more complex textured canvas on which to build the story.

This show made lots of bold choices from the very beginning and never let up. With full knowledge that comparisons to the original were inevitable, there was all manner of messing with the original format. They gave one of the main characters a sex change, fer cryin' out loud. The African-American Boomer character from the original was changed to an asian female in an era where political correctness led to many shows being especially severely criticized for a lack of representation of people of color. And they even turned Boomer to a sleeper agent bad guy.

I love the look to this show. The set design is "contemporary aircraft carrier." At first, I found myself a little distracted and confounded by the defiance of my expectation of Sci Fi set design and the lack of smooth, angular walls and fixtures and slick, glossy touch screen instrument displays. The sight of obvious, unmodified contemporary equipment, such as the corded telephone handsets, for example were jarring in the beginning. But as the story got moving, this seemed to settle into the background (where it belongs) and allow the characters and story to be front and center.

Finally a space show had the smarts to “shoot hand held” in the space battle scenes. Instead of the smooth, sterile video game look of most CG special effects, Galactica gave us a view that truly feels like WWII wing camera footage. With any other Sci Fi show, when a special effects scene comes on, my brain compulsively begins to evaluate technique. Is it CG or physical models? How is it lit? For the first time, my brain jumped past that nonsense and just reveled in what it was like to actually be in space.

I liked this show for what it did not have as much as what it did. This is a Sci Fi show with no aliens. What a concept? Just because you are in space doesn't mean you can't tell a HUMAN drama without the distraction of latex rubber foreheads. Alien cultures in Star Trek and other shows are so often 2-dimensional and defined by one single character trait. Vulcans are logical. Klingons are warlike. Ferengi are greedy. Producer Ronald D. Moore could have redefined aliens (like the original show's Borellian Nomen) in the same way he redefined so many other aspects of Sci Fi storytelling in this show, but he made perhaps the wisest decision of all. "Lets just not have any stinkin' aliens."

Technology had little to nothing to do with this show. In fact, one of the primary characteristics of the title "character" is that the Galactica has no networked computers. This is the main reason she survived the initial Cylon attack, which involved a computer virus. The weapons in the show, both handheld and heavy/aircraft-based, fire conventional bullets. Super-duper highly explosive bullets, to be sure, but bullets nonetheless. There are no laser beams to take us out of the atmosphere of realism.

There were no mysterious galactic phenomena, energy beings, or (for heaven's sake) holodeck malfunctions to put the characters in some kind of cute jeopardy for one episode only. Somewhat related to that, there was no technobabble. The day was never saved by "feeding a phase modulated graviton neutrino pulse through through the tachyon flux inhibitors to restore primary plasma coolant flow to the dilithium crystal matrix." Don't get me wrong. I love Next Generation. But there were just too many times when they had a great story that took characters in exciting new directions, but they didn't have a good ending, so they resorted grim faces, bombastic music, a lot of incomprehensible dialog followed by a big'ol slap to the reset button.

And speaking of that, there is no reset button in "Galactica." If you're dead, you're dead. (Well, except for Cylon resurrection, of course.) No waking up in the shower and realizing it was all a dream. If you lose an eye or a leg, there are no cloned or cybernetic implant replacements. Other shows put characters in different roles just for one episode or for a short arc, but Lee Adama handed in his rank insignia in a heated exchange with his father in order to become defense council to the foremost traitor to the colonies. That could have been a short detour, but it became a permanent change. "Galactica" had enough hot shot pilots and needed to groom a few statesmen, so the change was made without a flinch.

I have trouble getting into the anti-hero type of characters depicted in shows such as "Breaking Bad" and "Dexter," but I really dig it when characters have a dark side. Pretty much every character in Galactica does both heroic things and deplorable things. A primary example of this is the character of Gaeta, portrayed by Alessandro Juliani. In the pilot movie, he is a young, enthusiastic, hyper-efficient officer, almost in the Wesley Crusher mold, but through a long story arc, he becomes bitter and bigoted and ultimately the lever for some of the most grievous atrocities depicted in the show. But in the end, his character is not purely evil, but tinged with tragedy.

There is similar complexity another major character, Admiral Cain (Michelle Forbes). Clearly, there is an aura of heroism cast over her by the mere fact that she and her crew survived the Cylon massacre, but we are subsequently forced to confront whether the ends are justified by her means. Similarly, in the "New Caprica" arc, our heroes were forced to become in many ways the same kind of insurgents and suicide bombers we were finding so reprehensible in Iraq at the time.

I love a story that grabs me by the 'nads and makes me look at something from the other side.

I think very actor in this show was excellent, and Olmos, Bamber and Callis were SUPERLATIVE.

So, there's my Number One, and my primary reasons for choosing it. As mentioned in the Fusion Patrol podcast, there can be debate over the religion and mysticism depicted in the show, and many folks seem to take umbrage at the finale, which I found quite good. But all of that can be discussed in future posts, as this one has already gotten quite long.

Now, I suppose I do have to acknowledge something else: Dr. Frakkin' Who. Of the four of us taking this opportunity to publish top ten lists (Newsarama, Ben and Eugene from Fusion Patrol, and me), I'm the only one who doesn't have Dr. Who right at the top of the list, or anywhere on the list for that matter. When one's view is so apparently outside the mainstream an explanation is probably called for. So, in much the same way as I might have to explain why I, for hypothetical example, think powdered pig shit is good on corn flakes, I here briefly provide my take on Dr. Who: I just don’t get it. I’ve seen maybe 6 episodes of different vintages, so while I will grant that I may not have given it a fair shake considering it's inexplicably lengthy run, the fact is I never, ever saw one thing in Dr. Who that made me want to fight through another episode. Sorry.

Top Ten Sci Fi shows of all time - Pt. III

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Continuing the previous two day's posts, here are positions four thru two on my Top Ten Sci Fi Shows of All Time, in response to the Newsarama list and the Fusion Patrol Podcast.

4: Land of the Lost - It's very easy to dismiss this show simply because it was saturday-morning "KidVid." Even if you look past that, there's the campy over-broad acting and the jerky stop-motion dinosaur action and grainy blue screen chromakey compositing. But somebody smuggled some adults into the writers' room (like "Star Trek" veterans David Gerrold, D.C. Fontana, Norman Spinrad, Walter Koenig, and Theodore Sturgeon, as well as noted SF literature authors Larry Niven and Ben Bova). The results in terms of storytelling were considerably above what should have been expected.

NBC probably would have been happy with any random stream of clips depicting third-rate actors being terrorized by dinosaurs, anything to put between the commercials for Sugar Smacks and GI Joe's with the kung-fu grip. But, for the first two seasons anyway, the producers trusted that pre-teen kids would tune in and actually REMEMBER what they learned in previous weeks about the rules and physics of the Land of the Lost. If you didn't remember that pylons control the weather, you might be lost a few weeks later when were looking at the pylon that controls gravity. This show gives kids a lot more credit than do modern offerings like, say, SpongeBob.

Special effects technology of the day was pushed past the breaking point, and to this day, I find it jarring to go back and forth between the videotape of the actors, and the stop motion film of the dinosaurs, but if the story is actually making you think a little bit, maybe those things aren't quite as noticeable. Every answer revealed about the Land of the Lost led to another question, not the least of which is why Holly didn't grow completely out of her costume after the first season. To my knowledge, there was no pylon that opened a doorway to K-mart.

You know, "Land of the Lost" would be a great premise for a movie. Who would play the father? Maybe Liam Neeson? Anyone but Will Ferrell. . .

3: Nowhere Man: - There was not room for both The Prisoner and Nowhere Man in my top ten. So I had to choose. When I first saw "Nowhere Man," I thought, "gee, this is a lot like "The Prisoner." There are subtle references to "Prisoner" throughout, and one episode, "Paradise On Your Doorstep," while not a shot-for-shot re-make of Prisoner Episode 1, ("Arrival"), would have fit right in with Patrick McGoohan's show from the 1960's.

I chose "Nowhere Man" because of it is more contemporary and because it is set in "the real world" rather than what is to US viewers an otherworldly landscape. I may also relate to Thomas Veil more than Number Six because Veil is, like me, a photographer. There is, however, an annoying continuity problem in that the producers couldn't seem to decide if Veil used a Canon F-1 or a Nikon FM-2. (I'm a devoted Canon guy now, but I admit I did once have an inappropriate relationship with a Nikon.)

Both shows deal with a man deprived of his personal identity. While Number Six is abducted from his natural environment and incarcerated in The Village, Nowhere Man's Thomas Veil is "erased," all traces of his identity are deleted and he is set adrift with only a single strip of negatives to prove he has ever lived and breathed in this world. Where Number Six was taken away from his life, Thomas Veil's life was taken away from him. This enabled Veil to move around in any environment, while Number Six was stuck in The Village, unless there was an unusual plot device at work.

There was a heavy X-files influence on Nowhere Man. The show was filmed in Vancouver, just like X-files, and a conspiracy, either by the government or possibly something else much more organized, is the center of the plot. Both shows also have atmospheric music by Mark Snow.

This was another one-season wonder, and while I'm sure the season closer was intended to be a cliff-hanger leading into a season two, it holds up surprisingly well as a series finale.

The DVD set for this show is unusually rich in special features and commentary, and I recommend adding it to your Netflix queue.

2: Star Trek - Two reasons this show rockets directly to the Number 2 spot. First, it was great during the 1960's as the first "adult Sci Fi" in a time of "adult westerns" and is still great almost five decades later if you just look past some dated-looking technology and dippy costumes. (Dave Barry once said the uniforms looked like pajamas.) Sure, there are some '60's clinkers, like the line in Turnabout Intruder about, "Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women." Obviously, at least in that one script, there was a failure to foresee the strides women would make in subsequent decades toward equality, but for the most part, considering these episodes are nearly 50 years old, the writing holds up tremendously well.

And second, without the enormous success of Star Trek, Sci Fi would possibly never again have gotten any kind of toe-hold on television. The track record of sci-fi failure through the 70's would almost surely have been death to the genre on TV if Star Trek had not been racking up killer numbers at the same time in syndication. Without the networks trying to re-capture this lightning in a bottle, we might never have had several of the shows on this and other top-ten lists.

Nobody put any of the other four Star Trek shows in the top ten, even though surely at least one of them would be worthy. Obviously, Star Trek could take five of the top ten, but in my opinion the other shows, while still good each in their own way, did not break significant new ground not already broken by the one that started it all. I feel the original series is by a significant margin the best of the bunch, but those who grew up in the 80's/90's instead of the 60's/70's like me often would put Next Generation at the top. It's generational. Deal with it.

Tomorrow: What else? The number one best Sci Fi show ever. The Fusion Patrol's Ben and Eugene ain't gonna like it.