Monthly Archives: November 2006

Counterpoint: Heroes Episode 10

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I’ve recently discovered the fascinating show _Heroes_ on NBC – and I’m already a huge fan. It’s fun to watch this comic book for TV, my only complaint being that some of the powers manifested by many of the characters aren’t exactly original. But I can live with that. It’s hard sometimes to come up with original material, especially in this technologically-driven day and age when new ideas are communicated around the globe in a matter of hours. What is important to me is how the writers of _Heroes_ handle these powers, how they portray them, and how they allow their characters to use them and, in turn, be shaped by them. There is a great deal of potential here, and I feel like they’ve already done an excellent job of the initial build-up.

The “SF Signal blog”:http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/004534.html today pointed to “another blog writeup”:http://jlbgibberish.blogspot.com/2006/11/heroes-six-months-earlier.html that complained about a few perceived problems with this week’s episode of _Heroes_, “Six Months Earlier.” I hesitate to call what follows a rebuttal; my intent here is not to argue but simply to present an alternate viewpoint. Let me present a couple of these complaints and attempt to dress them differently.

bq. It’s stretching the borders of credibility well past the breaking point that everyone discovers (or at least starts to manifest) at the exact same point in time.

I don’t find this too incredible at all, actually. They’ve already stated several times throughout the course of the show that all these “Specials” ((I’ve taken to referring to these characters as “Specials” because, while they make exhibit unique powers, I’m not convinced yet that they are all actually “Heroes.”)) are connected in some way. The writers have taken great care to demonstrate how completely the events of each of their lives are linked to all the others. So, it does not overly surprise me that they all began to develop their powers at roughly the same time. In the words of Stephen King, they are _ka-tet_, many individuals who share a common fate, a mutual destiny. Evolution though this may be, it should also be clear to all by now that there is something greater at work binding all these Specials together.

bq. Dr. Suresh’s list of names of potential meta-humans is just too convenient.

This is a fair point that I’m willing to grant. For now. I understood Suresh’s algorithm to be something that accounted for numerous variables in order to find all the Specials. How exactly the algorithm works has never been explained, so up to now I’ve been willing to suspend a little disbelief and allow that Suresh has somehow managed to take all factors into account. Yes, it’s a stretch, but for the time being it’s one I can live with.

bq. And [Nathan Petrelli] just happens to discover his flight powers at the instant his wife is paralyzed in an accident.

Discover? No, no. Completely accidental. The way I read this one was that the high emotional stress of the situation somehow activated Nathan’s particular gift at what turned out to be a most inconvenient time. Had this not happened, I think they stood a much greater chance of surviving the ordeal with little more than scrapes on the rear bumper (they were, after all, driving a sports car).

bq. But what annoys me the most about this episode is the ultimate pointlessness of it… [Hiro] Fails to change the future. That’s treading water in a narrative sense.

I disagree. All the Specials are only just beginning to learn their powers, learning how to use them, learning the ramifications and limitations of what they can do. The fact that Hiro was unable, in this case, to change anything at all should not come as a surprise. Again, it would seem that his unintentional leap forward was sparked by high emotional stress, something that all the Specials are going to have to learn to overcome. And I can’t help but wonder if Hiro’s leap forward and inability to leap back again was manipulated by something outside of himself. I can’t say for sure, though; it’s only a theory.

I’m eager to see what else happens from here. I know that the show has been signed for a full season, so there are 12 more episodes to come before the summer programming break. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

“Yay, first post!”

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Here’s one I don’t really get. I mean, I ‘get’ it, but I don’t ‘get‘ it.

I keep my ear to the ground for Halo-related videos – machinima, montage, etc. A lot of these videos get posted up on public forums – i.e. a discussion thread with the link to the video download. It’s a pretty streamlined way of doing things, allowing people to post comments and feedback on the video in that same thread.

Here’s my question, though. Just how big of a social loser do you have to be where you consider it something grand and fabulous that yours is the first comment in response to the video? Specifically, when that response consists of “downloading now edit when i’ve watched it.” Has anyone heard of “15 minutes of game?” In this case, though, I doubt the ‘fame’ in question even makes it 15 seconds. I dunno – just seems like if you get your jollies from being the first poster in a video thread, then you _really_ need to get a life.

For what it’s worth…

Departure

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Writers always seem to be so surprised when their current story project takes on a life of its own, changing from the vision of what they had originally intended into something completely different. I’m honestly not sure exactly _why_ writers are so surprised – this happens to me all the time. Maybe the difference is that I usually start out my stories with only a vague notion of what they’re going to be about, a fuzzy image and a couple of lines of dialogue that serve as the referential for everything else. Naturally, stories begun on so few scraps inevitably take on a life of their own, dumping me – and my readers – out in completely unexpected places. The writers who seem to be the most surprised, I’ve noticed, are the ones who lay out careful outlines from start to finish, only to find that the final product deviated around the second bullet point and took off into parts unknown (and unexpected).

Yet, you would think that after this happens a few times and hearing all the time how it happens to other writers that they would come to expect it. Wouldn’t you?

The Dark

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The Dark: Home

Here’s an interesting find. _The Dark_ is a sci-fi series that will be broadcast exclusively on the Internet. Currently, there are two free episodes online to generate interest with plans to have a new 12-minute episode available weekly. The subscription fee is a initial payment of $20 with a $1 fee per episode.

From the website:

Space is dark … silent … lethal.

Ships stay quiet when they can and when they can’t, it’s because they’re too damned big. Either way, no spotlights shining on white hulls, no glowing nacelles. Nobody hails anybody. Space is an unlit sea and everything swimming in it is hungry. Planet systems mean resources and, unless someone says otherwise, they’re there for the taking.

It has been decades since the last independent nation on Earth was absorbed by the Community of Aligned Nations (aka. Generica). The solar system has been colonized, more or less, and things are going swimmingly for the genetically optimized citizens of Generica, until, that is, aliens arrive to obliterate most everything.

Mysterious aliens; no one has actually seen them, just their massive, all-devouring ships, and no two of which are alike. There has been no communication either, and Generica’s increasingly desperate pleas to negotiate go unanswered. It’s war, and for humans, it’s going very badly indeed. In the unlit labyrinth of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, three old ships from a long-defunct independent republic drop out of deep-freeze and begin waging their own kind of war against the aliens. Crewed by misfits, genetically randomized (normal folk), the Widow, Wolf and the Recluse begin an unrelenting campaign using stealth tactics, snatching small victories where great navies find only destruction. Like the hunter subs of the first cold war, they lurk in the dark, communicating with no one (not even, no especially not, Generica), with no base to call their own, and each operating with fierce independence.

This is the story of one of those ships: The Recluse. Damn near invisible in space, powered by a throbbing fusion reactor, and inhabited by a crew for whom cabin-fever is a way of life. Each crew member is a study in paranoia, neuroses and just plain weirdness. These men and women are our heroes.

The acting in the two free episodes remind me a bit of a ‘B’-movie, but I’m intrigued by the concept behind this series. I’m a bit disappointed that they haven’t shown more engagement with the aliens, but then again, 12 minutes isn’t a lot of time for storytelling. It’s something that I may be interested in checking out further as they develop this.

In the meantime, go check it out and then come back here and tell me what _you_ think. I’d be curious what other people’s reactions are.

Art of the Saber

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FXhome.com :: Cinema :: Movie Info :: Art of the Saber ::

A friend of mine stumbled across this video the other day. It’s a beautifully choreographed light saber duel, with an opening narration that pays homage to a Civil War soldier. The video is brief – right around five minutes in length – and it’s close leaves you wanting more. You can download a copy of the video from the link above, but don’t bother clicking through to the forums – they’ve been hacked for some time now, which indicates that those forums are no longer active, since no one’s bothered to fix it. Check out the video, though. It’s well worth it. And if anyone knows of any other videos done by the Ho Brothers, please let me know.

Release Date Madness

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Have you heard about the hardcore gaming fans who lined up in anticipation of the shelf-date for the PS3? These are the folks who braved the cold, the wet, and the elements to secure their copy of this limited supply ((At least for now.)) item. They are also the folks who reportedly decided that a little physical brouhaha would make things better and increase their chances of getting their system.

These are also the folks at whom I scoff and laugh. I suppose it’s cool that they love their hobby ((Read: addiction.)) so much that they want to be one of the first to experience the latest and (supposedly) greatest technology in the industry, but I think they’re insane. There’s nothing that a little time, patience, and debugging won’t cure. For one thing, the cost on most video game consoles tends to drop, given enough time. For another, nearly every console initially has bugs and glitches that need to be worked out. A little patience will not only get you a video game system at a lower price but it will save you hours of headaches if you simply wait until they work the kinks out.

So, to you who sat outside and shivered and slept on cold concrete (and even ended up, in some cases, with black eyes), I just want to let you know that I was at home, in my warm bed, happily sleeping. I hope it was worth it for you.

Podcast

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I’ve been considering the idea of recording some of the flash fiction stories I’ve written and podcasting them – y’know, just a little something to further exercise my inner geek. It would require, of course, that I purchase a suitable microphone, but I already have the necessary software. ((Open source is a beautiful thing.))

Is this something anyone might be interested in?

Uninstall

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I’ve decided the time has come to say goodbye to a couple more of my Firefox extensions. And I have to say, I’m not really going to miss them.

The first was “coComment”:http://www.cocomment.com/. I’ve been using this one for a while now to track comments I’ve left on other blogs. But the trouble is that the service has been terribly unreliable. Sure, it’s logged every comment I’ve left since I started using it, but then it only updates the ongoing discussions very infrequently. This then forces me to follow-up on a conversation by clicking through from my coComments page, which seems to pretty much invalidate the whole point of using coComment in the first place. But, I’ve been living with this draw-back for a while now; it was something I’d decided I could live with (coComment is, after all, still in beta). The straw that broke the camel’s back came when I noticed this morning that coComment was suddenly trying to track all of my _forum_ discussions, as well (something which, on a couple of boards, it will never be able to do since it requires a username and password to access). And there’s no way (that _I_ could find) to disable this feature. I just decided that, with this, enough’s enough; it’s time to put this one away and move on to other things. Maybe one day someone will actually develop a comment tracker that does everything I want it to do (and more) and lets me have a higher degree of control over what it tracks.

The second extension I “fired” was for “Trailfire”:http://trailfire.com/. I’d given it a whirl on the recommendation of a friend. What Trailfire does is allows a user to 1) create a logical trail on the Internet of related websites, and 2) see and follow the trails of other Trailfire users. Interesting concept. I’ve just had absolutely zero use for it. So, it had to go away.

I love my Firefox extensions. There are a lot of good ones out there that turn Firefox into a fierce little web surfing beast. It’s just that, sometimes, some of them have to be sent west.

Vision Correction

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Could be I’m strange, but I always look forward to getting a new pair of glasses. Today I had my first eye exam in five or six years. ((It’s nice having medical insurance again.)) My eyes are happy and healthy, though I’m getting a slight boost in my prescription (which was expected). My astigmatism in one eye is completely gone and almost negligible in the other, which is a nice change because it means I now have the option of contact lens without actually _needing_ reading glasses. So that’s an option for down the road that has a certain appeal. ((This is especially true for those days when I have to go out and work in the rain.)) And of course the new frames I’m getting are one of the more expensive ones in the store, but these have that Flexon technology that means I can pretty much bend them whatever way I want and they’ll bounce right back. Nice for the guy (like me) who manages to be fairly destructive sometimes. Plus, the lenses are getting tricked out with an anti-glare coating and Transitions technology. With all that, I’m not sure I’m even going to _want_ contacts. I feel like a little kid on Christmas morning!

Oh, and the wife has been upgraded to a sexy new frame, as well, with a boost in her prescription and Transitions technology. We be stylin’, Mon!