By day, I am mild-mannered Andy but by night, I watch Stargate.

If you are possessed, say to Teal’c: “I feel like a helpless observer inside my own body.” Works every time.

Tonight, we have the chick from Mysterious Ways.

More like half a season in three days. Stargate season seven is some great tv. I was concerned that there might be some kind of decline but it turns out to be some of the best yet.

The Doctor from Voyager turns up too.

Don’t open the iris on the gate! It’s Jonas. He’s trying to get through. No don’t, ah well since he’s here, what does he want? What’s wrong Jonas? Your planet going to explode? Oh it is. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!

Nice hair cut Jonas. Did your mother buy your clothes? I guess that’s the end of the episode. Jonas is going to die along with his planet and the councillors.

SG-1 is going try to save his people. An odd decision. I guess it’s just for show. They have to pretend to care.

Jonas has a girlfriend. You know showing her on tv is a sure way to get her dead. I’m putting my money on a horrible horrible death.

How convenient. Jonas has a giant digging machine. It’s lying around in the shed. I think I’ve seen this movie before.

Why don’t we use a bomb to solve the problem that was caused by the previous bomb? What a brilliant idea. Let’s use a bigger one this time.

Your girlfriend’s evil Jonas! I knew it. HAHAHAHA Jonas.

Divert power to the shields. Yay, it works every time.

Sacrifice yourself Jonas. No, make Jonas do it.

Leave her behind! Leave her behind! Kill his girlfriend! Kill her! Save yourselves and leave her to die. Go without her! Shut up Jonas. No one cares what you think. Go, listen to Teal’c. Go go!

What a sad ending. Jonas isn’t dead. His planet is saved and his girlfriend made it out alive, albeit without the Goa’uld inside.

Kirsten Dunst isn’t in this episode; I just wanted to put up a picture of her.

Just a couple of things. First, I’d like to officially deny the following rumours:

• I have never dressed up as a lotto ball.
• I do not go to karaoke nights.

Secondly, Wonderfalls is fantastic. Having seen all the episodes, I’m very sure that it’s going to make Shannon’s top ten.

And lastly Jolene Blalock who plays Subcommander T’Pol in Enterprise was in Stargate SG-1. It was difficult recognising her without the pointy ears.

The release of the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD approaches, and I decided that details of any changes must have surfaced on the net. And of course they have — I found a summarised list of changes courtesy of Terribly Mauled.

Episode IV: A New Hope

• New Jabba the Hutt
• Improved Han/Greedo scene — its a CGI Han and they both shoot at the same time now
• Aurabesh on the tractor beam generator that Obi Wan deactivates.
• Lightsaber colours tweaked.

Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

• Ian McDiarmid plays the Emperor in his hologram conversation with Vader. The dialogue has also been changed slightly.
• Temeura Morrison (Jango Fett) now voices Boba too.
• Luke’s scream during his suicide plunge down Bespin’s main shaft has been removed

Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

• Sebastian Shaw has been tweaked in the unmasking scene. He now has blue eyes to match Hayden Christensen, and he has no eyebrows — more fitting for a burns victim.
• Naboo appears in the victory celebration scene, complete with Gungans.
• The Jedi Temple can be seen on Coruscant in the same scene.
• Hayden Christensen now appears as spirit Anakin.

Personally, I’m delighted that the scream in ESB has gone — that was my major wish. Having a CGI Han for the Greedo scene seems unnecessary when they had a perfectly good scene just waiting for them to put back properly. At least they’ve realised it needed changing.

In any case, I’m looking forward to the 22nd of September. Shiny case.

Top Ten TV-Shows? Note: My Favourites, not the Best of All Time. There’s a difference. You’ll see.

OK, this may be going a bit far with the “I know! I’ll write a top ten instead of a review that way I can just waffle instead of having to actually think” mania that I seem to have adopted for myself. I will be thoroughly surprised if this one actually makes a grapefruit appearance as I have been a third of the way through a non-insane Buffy Top Ten and a Top 25 Movies for about a year the former, and 6 months the latter. Oh and there was that “Bottom 10 Buffies” as well, but it was so hard to narrow down to only 10 that I gave up and had a cry about a series that started oh-so-promisingly… Anyway, back to GOOD series…

What I really wanted to do here was a four-way tie for Number 1, but then, that would defeat the whole ‘ranking’ idea. I need to be clear though that the difference between my appreciation of my top four shows is so miniscule that its defies measurement. My mood for today has caused 1 — 4 to shape up that way, and tomorrow I may very well play switcheroo just for the sake of it. And to annoy Tom.

My Top 10 has morped into a ’12 that I will haphazardly mention for their various coolnesses’, plus a top 10. I warned you at the start, this is prattle for the sake of varying authorship on Grapefruit. I’m taking one for the team, and as such cannot be bagged. Ner.

In descending order, first of all, to get the hysterical laughter out of your systems, I am going to mention…

22 | Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

Now, when this show came out in 1993 I was all of 9, and I fell right in the middle of the demographic for this one: a fantasy edge for the intelligently challenged. I had a big crush on Dean Cain, I taped every episode (which were promptly overwritten a year or so later in shame), and I even remember the elation of buying the Lois and Clark showbag at the royal melbourne show in ’94. I kid you not. Folders, pencil cases, stickers… I was one of those pre-teeny girly fanatics that I now shoulder extreme distaste for. Why am I unloading this blackmail-worthy information on your innocent eyes, gentle readers? Who knows. It’s a Saturday, I can do what I like.

21 | Party of Five

The drama-arena to suit every taste: The older-scruffier-stubble-ridden brother, the younger pretty-boy looking brother, the eldest teen-angst-ridden sister, and the youngest sister around my age who I suppose was the one I was meant to identify with. No doubt you boys had the crush on her. It was the early-90’s Dawson’s Creek, which my tv set told me last week was the late 90’s The O.C., which I refuse to watch but my darling brother seems somewhat addicted to. Hmm, where did I put my point?

20 | Ally McBeal

Down here at number 20 on the list come Ally McBeal. This show got a good giggle out of me, and I liked a number of the characters, however (and this is a big however) the lead character irritated me beyond words. As a result, I could rarely stomach the show, despite Gil Bellows’ and Robert Downey Jnr’s respective cuteness.

Moving right along to the sole Australian contender…

19 | Blue Heelers

If you happen to turn on your plasma this Wednesday and flick over to the seven network, you will not be watching the show of which I speak. Blue Heelers: The Good Seasons, as I am renaming it, consisted of a cast including William McInnes, Tasma Walton, Damian Walshe-Howling, and oh yeah, Lisa McCune. Ten years later, there are only two originals left. While I’m sure there exist some series which can sustain a life this long and the gradual exodus of their finest characters (I’m thinking primarily of ER, which for blood and guts reasons, I don’t happen to watch) but Blue Heelers is not amoung those that can pull it off. The desperation of Aussie drama to measure up to some of its American or UK rivals was witnessed in the insanity that was the “Blue Heelers: Live” episode. However, with budgets that I estimate to be about a 1,000,000,000,000,000,000th of what the US and UK put into making their shows, I still think aussies do OK.

18 | Beverly Hills 90210

If I could think of some creative way to segue from Blue Heelers into Beverly Hills 90210, I would, but I suspect it would just creep everyone out so I’ll just be quick, like ripping a band-aid off. Again, early 90’s (1990-1994 were the high school years, mini Shannon was aged 6 — 10), pre-teen girly-girl fanatic would have literally held her for breath for an entire week waiting to see if Dylan would choose Brenda or Kelly, if she hadn’t posessed just enough intelligence to realise this would result in her death and then she would NEVER KNOW who he chose.1. OK, I’m half-kidding here. I would like to say I never watched nor enjoyed this show, but it would be a lie. 90210: The High School Years, had me. Through and through.

17 | Seinfeld

“No Soup for You!!”. Enough said? Aaah, Sienfeld. What can one say? This was just a really good show. Being a half-hour sitcom, it was good for that slot on weeknights as you wait for the show you actually want to watch to come on… But that’s not really giving this gem enough credit. While it will never hold a place in my heart like a good fantasy/sci-fi or even one hour drama can, on the scale of ‘good-for-a-laugh’, it was a porker!

And from there I’m going to…

16 | Play School

Even now I can sit with my cousins and watch Play School and catch myself smiling. Yes, its a show for toddlers. So what? This is a listing of my favourite shows, and since I have been placing no boundaires on which era of my life it happened to be my favourite in, Play School cannot be forgotten. Benita, Noni, Phillip, and Monica taught me numbers, letters… BLAME THEM for this article, I wouldn’t be able to write it without them.

Going straight from Play School to Coupling would be just too large a leap, so I’m segueing with…

15 | Dawson’s Creek

I’m not sure how this show ended. I don’t know who ended up with whom. I didn’t watch the last several seasons. All I know is, I liked it in the beginning. And that’s really all there is to say about this show. It was a hearty dose of teen melodrama when I was a teen melodramatic. It suited me just fine.

14 | Mad About You

I come now to Mad About You (we’re getting to Coupling, I swear). Paul Reiser, Helen Hunt, and some very simple yet beautifully executed storylines. The characters were really loveable, right down to their dog Murray. The supporting characters (and the leads, for that matter) had the perfect balance of comic insanities and realistic natures. There weren’t so quirky that you couldn’t identify (either with them yourself, or with the people in your life), yet they weren’t so real as to be dull.

13 | Coupling

If you’ve seen Coupling quotes randomly loading as you peruse Grapefruit sometimes (ie “When man invented fire, he didn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s cook,’ he said, ‘Great, now we can see naked bottoms in the dark!” or quite simply “Nipples!”) and wondered what on earth that show is, it’s an unsung BBC series which provokes the loudest out-loud laughing you will ever do. I get embarassed by my laugh when watching this show becuase it’s the kind of unrestrained laughter that makes me sound like a gander in mating season. Spanning four years, but with only 7 episodes a season on average, there have been a grand total of 28 over four years. Few, but fulgent.

If you’re a boy who’s ever met a girl and been slightly baffled, or a girl who’s ever met a boy and been utterly perplexed, watch this show. It boils them down to their simplest. And they talk about sex every 6.2 seconds. Even if you’re gay, you’ll like it. I don’t know why its hiding over on the ABC in Australia instead of running right alongside Sex and the City on commercial TV, but hey — commerical TV are the people who brought you Big Brother: Yet Another Season, so nothing can really surprise me.

Coming in at number 12…

12 | Gilmore Girls

This is for the girly girl in me. I would love to say I don’t watch this one currently, but seeing as channel nine plays it on Saturdays when other fans (who don’t have a life) are free, I download it! I know… the shame. But look, give it a chance. Its a WB show so you know its got some of those ‘good family values’ themes (think Seventh Heaven) but its also got really great writers working on it (think Angel… well, discount season 4). The dialogue in this show is The Best Dialogue on Television. Their style of speech is really refreshing. It’s a bit like the way the Dawson’s Creek kids used to talk, except that you can believe that the characters of Gilmore Girls actually know what all these big words mean. The two main characters in this dramedy are a first-year college girl who did well in school and kind of breezed past teen-rebellion into a quiet maturity, and her mother whom she has a sensational relationship with. Can you really blame me for liking it?? Plus it’s got all the other things I like in my TV — plenty of sexual tension, lots of cute boys running around, and characters who actually progress and develop over the seasons. If only it had flashbacks it would be perfect!

And for my final ramble, before I move onto the official rambling of my top ten…

11 | Stargate Atlantis

I am enjoying this new series more than I am season eight of Stargate SG-1 at the moment. It is very similar to SG-1 (which as you will see in the top ten is one of my all time faves) in a lot of ways, but hey its a spin-off, what do we expect? It is also different in its own right, and breaks away from SG-1 in a way that I didn’t think it would be able to do. There are the core four characters. One of whom is a high-ranking military officer and the leader, one of whom is a smart woman, one of whom is an alien, (and one of whom is a black dude, as Matt pointed out to me yesterday), its just that the woman happens to be the alien and the science geek is Dr. MacKay (of the SG-1 series).

The ‘Jack-equivalent/replacement’ was always going to be a very difficult character to create and cast, but they’ve hit right on the money. I already love John Sheppard, more so than I ever did Jack perhaps. He’s less sarcastic, but still quite funny and is very personable. There is plenty of sexual tension between Teyla and Sheppard and unlike on SG-1 where we knew it could never happen (literally, for legal reasons) these two are so gonna get together by the end of this season… I can feel it! Maybe the start of season two… Well look, I can at least dream that they will get together because they are setting up the sexual tension and there is no pesky court-martial hanging over their heads. Dr. MacKay, whom I HATED WITH A FIERY PASSION OF HELL in SG-1, is also growing on me. He’s still supremely ittirating, but now in kind of an endearing way. Plus, he cracks me up. And Lt. Ford is the hotty. Mmm. Anyway, it is still too soon to see if this show can live up to the high standards I am giving it, 7 episodes in, but its shaping up to be as Angel was to Buffy.

Footnotes

1. He chose Kelly for those of you wondering. Big dramas. He SO should have picked Brenda.

Just a quick entry to say that I’ve finally worked out why Physics is such a hassle to learn — It’s because there are no useful resources (that I can find) on the internet. Google searches for specific topics come up with a bunch of commercial applications and over-your-head lecture notes with completely different notations to the ones you’re used to.

Has anyone seen a good site devoted to Physics online? “Anyone” probably being Andrew, or Matt. I absolutely refuse to buy any of these $150 textbooks.

I[ftn] did something last weekend that I was going to write about. Hmm, what was it? It was … no, it’s gone. I’ve forgotten.

Wait, it’s coming back. I was at a movie theatre. There were people there. I had a gun. No, not a gun; I had popcorn. I was running late. Maybe if I go back to the theatre I will remember the rest.

[sometime later]

It all came back. I saw The Bourne Supremacy. There were no memorable moments to the film; much like season 7 of Buffy. This film felt like one long attempt at tying off the loose ends from the first film and in the process, ruining it. The first film ended with couple of unresolved issues and a happy ending. A good way to end a film in my opinion. You can’t resolve everything without bloating the movie and dragging out the ending. A bit of mystery ends a film nicely.

The Bourne Supremacy has little in the way of a structured plot, limping from one section to the next. The CIA spend their time trying to find Bourne and whinging to each other, until the bad guy amongst them gives in. Bourne spends his time just wandering around remembering fragments from his assassin days and trying to clear his conscience[ftn] until the credits suddenly roll. Throw in some Russians and there’s your plot. Comprehensively ruining both the sequel and the first movie, the likes of which has not been seen since Reloaded.

The camera work didn’t help. It was very shaky during the action scenes which I liked in the beginning until it made me feel sick. And the person next to me. There was a whole bunch of us feeling crook. It made the fight scenes confusing with the camera moving so much. Maybe I should drink less before going out. Maybe I missed something vital in the first ten minutes which I didn’t see as I was running late. But I doubt it.

And the end. There seemed to be no obvious ending to the film. We wouldn’t have known we were supposed to leave the cinema if it wasn’t for the credits rolling. After a car chase or two in the middle, the film wandered without a climax until it stopped. It felt like a tv episode in that respect. To be continued in the next episode because we’ve run out of time today. It just kept going and going and then ended like an essay in the middle of paragraph.

Just when you thought it would end there would be another bit.[ftn] It was like … no I’ve forgotten again.

Footnotes

1. Two can play the footnote game Tom.
2. Hello little girl. I hope I didn’t surprise you by waiting for you in your apartment in the dark. I killed your father and mother and I’d like to apologise for that. Anyway, I must be going now. Have a good day.
3. And then a little bit more.

When thinking about Joss Whedon’s cancelled series Firefly, I find it hard not to be reminded of J. Michael Strazynski’s Crusade. Both went for about half a season before getting dumped. Both had to come up with new first episodes to satisfy their studio. Both had a roguish, moody captain. Both tried doing the whole “no sound in space” thing accurately. Both have people occasionally strutting around in uniforms that make them look like bellhops.

There’s a difference, of course, in that Firefly doesn’t suck.[ftn]

There were two theories you could draw from the gradual decline of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. One was that Whedon and his crew were running out of ideas. The other was that they were running out of ideas that could be done in the Buffy format. On watching the intended first episode of Firefly, ‘Serenity’, it becomes clear that only the latter was true. Like any good first episode should be, ‘Serenity’ is packed to the gills with fresh plotting and good characters.

Captain Mal Reynolds helps a ship known as Serenity, leading a band of criminals about a universe regulated by the cold arm of the Alliance. Reynolds was on the losing side of the civil war that granted the Alliance this dominance, and is suitably embittered. In the first episode, the crew take on some new passengers, and find themselves desperately trying to unload wanted cargo for cash — while avoiding the dangers of both the Alliance and the Reavers.

The Reavers are not, however, any creepy kind of alien race. While the show is abundant with every piece of culture the creators could find, there are no alien beings to be seen. Reavers are humans from the outskirts of known space who have been driven homicidally insane, and are feared by everyone in the universe, including even the toughest of our intrepid crew. While I’m normally all in favour of aliens, the decision to make an alien-free science fiction series is a good one in order to both differentiate Firefly from Star Trek, but also to accentuate the show’s key genre — the Western.

Yes, there may not be aliens, but there are horses, and deserts, and really cool old-fashioned looking guns. And the western element also goes some way to explaining where the majority of Firefly‘s drama comes from — tension. The episode moves a bit slower than your average TV show — but I found myself on the edge of my seat repeatedly. This is helped further by the soundless space, which works for Firefly and not against it as it did to Crusade. Perhaps we can hit a general rule here — if your show involves complicated space battles with big explosions — screw phyiscs and make yourself some booms. But if all you’re likely to be doing in space is hiding and running, then no sound will probably work better for you.

Firefly‘s characters also make a good impression. A lot of Whedon’s characters in the past have started as cliches and then been fleshed out later. These ones hit the ground running, for the most part. Mal especially is fantastic — brutal, funny, unreasonable, sensible. Just the kind of contradictions I like in a character, and brilliantly acted to boot. I won’t bother listing all the actors here, but Jewel Staite is amazingly adorable as Kaylee,[ftn] while Sean Maher’s nervous yet brave doctor, Simon, makes a very strong impression.

The only real tragedy of this tense, beautiful episode is that it wasn’t transmitted where it should have been — at the start of the show. In fact, American viewers got to see it last. “Last is kinda like first… it just comes a bit later,” comments Tim Minear in the next episode’s[ftn] commentary, quietly avoiding calling Fox idiots for not liking this episode and insisting on a new first story written in a weekend. But they are. Because this would have been one of the best first episodes of a series ever.

Footnotes

1. Did Crusade suck? Only in the sense that it had godawful dialogue, some woeful acting, and the most pathetic musical score in the history of TV.
2. Canadian as it turns out — no wonder. And 22 years old. Get me a plane, I’m going back.
3. ‘The Train Job’, not such a good episode really. More on that later though.

Ah, such fun for the EMS Orchestra to play at the prestigious Dean’s Honours Awards, where students in the top 3% of their class are given little blue scrolls and shiny keyring lights. Though all of them we imagine were disappointed because at first glance the lights seemed like laser pointers.

I remember when people used to call out my name and I’d walk up on stage, shake someone’s hand, and get an award. If I were making excuses I’d point out that the prizes aren’t nearly as good these days. But really, the motivation has just faded away. I wish it hadn’t, I remember how much fun it was when you actually enjoyed doing assignments.

However, apart from a vague, creeping sense of futurelessness, it doesn’t really bother me much. I wonder if you can get vague feelings of impending doom surgically removed?