(1) Nick Skywalker’s touch of genius —
Ray and Han conversation.#StarWars #TheForceAwakens #HanSolo pic.twitter.com/7Y3YoeN3Qx
— Nick Hedenbeck (@NickSkywalk) October 21, 2015
(2) Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow is teasing plans for a sequel. Cinema Blend says here’s what to expect:
It all has to do with what B.D. Wong’s Dr. Wu said in this summer’s blockbuster: “We’re not always going to be the only ones who can make a dinosaur.” In an interview with Wired U.K., Trevorrow said he found that to be an interesting idea:
What if this went open source? It’s almost like InGen is Mac, but what if PC gets their hands on it? What if there are 15 different entities around the world who can make a dinosaur?
Though Trevorrow admits this isn’t really covered in the original movie, it’s something in which he sees potential for growth. Looking back to the first Jurassic Park film, we saw Wayne Knight’s Dennis Nedrey attempt to steel the genetic material from dinosaurs and smuggle them off the island for a third party. While he didn’t succeed, this seems to be along the same lines that Trevorrow is talking about.
(3) Tom Galloway: “Seems Mark Zuckerberg’s project for this year was to read a lot of books (for values of “lot” that amounts to one every two weeks. Well, he is busy). There’s a Facebook page to serve as an online book club for them, and the latest choice is the Hugo-winning Three Body Problem.”
(4) David Gerrold has made his novelette “Entanglements,” published in the May/June issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, a free read via Dropbox. [PDF file]
(5) Aya de Leon’s article “Space Babe Fantasies: On Geoff Marcy and Sexism in Science and Sci-Fi” for The Toast begins with a headline example of harassment, and moves on to comment about the genre, including three paragraphs about Sad Puppies.
Last Thursday, my colleagues and I received an email from the Chancellor of UC Berkeley informing us that Marcy had resigned. A panel had found that he had sexually harassed female students for nearly a decade. According to Azeen Ghorayshi, the reporter who broke the story for BuzzFeed, Marcy’s great success was part of the reason why his pattern of harassment went unchallenged. As Ghorayshi explained, “Marcy’s is the rare ilk of scientific research that is capable of both reaching the peak of his field and capturing the public imagination.”
Ghorayshi lays out in painful detail how Marcy’s behavior was both widespread and well known; her article documents incidents of alleged misconduct with female colleagues dating back to the 1980s. BuzzFeed also noted that “UC Berkeley is currently under federal investigation for its handling of dozens of sexual violence complaints on campus.”
(6) Adam-Troy Castro offers an analogy in “Enough With the Fershlugginer Chocolate Cake, Already”.
Look, I’m going to explain this in terms you might be able to understand.
I like chocolate cake just fine.
I think chocolate cake is one of the things that makes life worth living.
As a fat guy, I not only return to chocolate cake more often than is healthy for me, but can actually wax rhapsodic about great slices of chocolate cake from my past.
I’m perfectly capable of sitting down with you and geeking out over chocolate cake.
But I can’t eat just chocolate cake.
(7) And apparently you can’t drink Pepsi Perfect either.
“Back to the Future” fans had hoped to be sipping a Pepsi Perfect by now, but most of them are making sad eyes at their computers after facing a fast sellout of a special release of the bottles.
Fans have been waiting for this day ever since the 1989 sequel, when Marty McFly and Doc Brown arrived in the future on October 21, 2015. In honor of the film, Pepsi decided to make 6,500 limited-edition bottles of Pepsi Perfect available.
Pepsi Perfect makes a cameo appearance at an ’80s-theme cafe in the future. Fans got extra-excited about the prospect of owning it because it feels both iconic and attainable (selling for $20.15, about £13, AU$28). The release date? October 21, 2015, naturally.
Now imagine the stress when Back to the Futurites discovered that some of the Pepsi Perfect bottles went on sale early and that other people had snapped them up. Actually, you don’t have to imagine it. Here’s a selection of what they said:
Amazon reviewer Pissed AF wrote: “I am SO upset!! This didn’t even pop up in the search! And you released it a whole hours early? Are you kidding me?????????” This is currently the top most-helpful review on the Pepsi Perfect Amazon page.
(8) Notes Adweek: “During his stay in the future, McFly often references a copy of USA Today, which was created specifically for the movie. To celebrate the occasion, USA Today wrapped its paper in a replica of the movie edition.”
(9) Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd rolled onto the set of Jimmy Kimmel Live in a classic DeLorean and got a standing ovation just for showing up.
(10) Today’s Birthday Boys
- October 22, 1938 — Christopher Lloyd
- October 22, 1952 — Jeff Goldblum
(11) Now for something completely different. Entertainment.ie names its “Top 10 Time Travel Movies That Aren’t Back To The Future”
(12) How It Should Have Ended – why Big Hero 6 should have been a lot shorter.
(13) James H. Burns praises the Mets’ broadcast crew:
Another reason for those who admire near Hall of Fame first baseman Keith Hernandez (famous for his stints with the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets), now a long time Mets broadcaster, to like him: In the local post game after the Mes clinched the National League title, when talking about first baseman Luca Duda, “We’ve seen him go from the depths of Mordor, to the heights of the Swiss Alps…”
Frequently, during unusual moments in Mets seasons past, Hernandez and lead broadcaster Gary Cohen, and former Mets pitcher Ron Darling (also a broadcaster with TBS), will discuss ancient Saturday mornings, and cartoons; CHILLER THEATRE; Kurt Vonnegut, and puppet shows….
(14) An artist used Google Street View to visit all the places in Around the World in 80 Days and created postcards of those places.
(15) Mark Kelly in Part 4 of his “Rereading Isaac Asimov” series comments —
“Nightfall” is still, I would guess, Asimov’s most popular story, though it was one of his earliest stories, and one which Asimov came to resent — he felt that he must have improved as a writer over the subsequent decades (the story was published in 1941, just two years after his first-published story) — and was perplexed by how fans kept gravitating to this early story.
(16) Gregory N. Hullender touts a new article, “The Locus Reading List and Hugo Awards” at Rocket Stack Rank.
This new article looks for selection bias in Locus Recommended Reading List short fiction over the past fifteen years. We found that although stories from the reading list regularly make up about 70% of Hugo-nominated stories, there doesn’t seem to be any actual bias, either in terms of which sources they come from or in terms of the authors.
So while we can’t speak for how good a job Locus does with novels, we don’t find any obvious problems with their recommendations for short fiction.
(17) Really funny compilation of comics bloopers from Mental Floss.
Here are some classic screw-ups, printing errors, and unfortunate coincidences that have graced the pages of comic books and newspaper strips over the years.
(18) We end with a serious fan edit of what Han Solo sees before his eyes when he tells Rey and Finn about the past in the new trailer for The Force Awakens.
[Thanks to Tom Galloway, Steven H Silver, James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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Nominations:
Slings and Arrows
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Star Trek: Original Series
The Addams Family
Firefly
Joining in on a bracket!
Angel
Doctor Who-New
Eureka
Stargate: Atlantis
Warehouse 13
@Aaron: Which Twilight Zone? Original?
There is no other.
@Cassy B:
No we won’t!
I need to be very clear here, because I don’t want any confusion to linger: There will not be more than 64 contestants. The whole reason for splitting Discussion and Nomination into separate phases was so that people could get File770’s…impulse to completeness, let’s call it, out of their system and still come up with a manageable consensus tournament field.
If one’s other choices have already been picked, all that means is that they have at least one vote for them. That may mean they get in with a low seed, it may mean they miss the cutoff entirely, or it may mean that other people continue to vote for it and it gets a high seed. But if one leaves a genuine favorite off one’s nomination to nominate something one likes less just because it hasn’t been mentioned, one is making a choice to leave the favorite’s fate in other people’s hands.
FWIW, my own plan is to pick my Top 3 for sure, and maybe take a flyer on one or two. Tastes vary enough around here that I’m confident that even if everyone voted their true GOATs we’d end up with a decent spread.
Jim Henley, that’s ok; I still like my nominations enough to keep them. And really, there’s no way that Dr. Who New isn’t going to be on the ballot, no matter what I nominate….
@Cassy B: If you like your nominations, that’s what matters. 🙂
Nominations:
Star Trek: TOS
Buffy the Vampire-Slayer
Firefly
Battlestar Galactica (New)
Doctor Who (New)
ST:TOS – This isn’t a nostalgia pick, I don’t think, even though it gets on here for its influence on me and the genre more than because I burn to re-watch it any time soon. That said, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” clobbered me.
Buffy – On the other hand, I can and do re-watch Buffy, and unlike some, I don’t find any particular season bad.
Firefly – An accidental miniseries with a great circular structure. The very first thing that happens in the show is River Tam being snuck onto the Serenity. The very last thing that happens is her being welcomed onto the Serenity. And that is the story, encapsulated right there. Also, I’m the biggest Simon fan.
BSG (New) – Ron Moore was a deeply irresponsible show-runner in many ways. But in addition to a game-changing level of story quality at the start of the series, the ensemble was just fabulous all the way down. Only Deadwood had as talented an undercard. The performances from, say, “Fragged,” show how far down the roster the talent went, and the directors fostered their performances.
NuWho – For me, it’s mostly downhill after The Pandorica Opens. (Some people set the decline marker earlier.) But that’s a long, great run prior to that.
(Broke out the commentary from the list for my own cutting and pasting convenience because lazy.)
1. Farscape
2. Firefly
3. Eureka
4. Babylon 5
5. V (the 80s miniseries)
Still sorting out my full list, but in case I get distracted and nominations close before I’ve decided, I want to at least have put in a nomination for
1. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Forehead cloths! Getcher nominating Forehead Cloths here! Soothe that fevered brow!
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
The Dresden Files
due South
Firefly
Xena: Warrior Princess
TV Nominations:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Dr. Who (original)
Slings & Arrows
Star Trek TOS
Twilight Zone (original)
Babylon 5
ST: Deep Space Nine
Stargate SG1
Farscape
Stargate Atlantis
Oops. OK…
Ark II
Wild Wild West
Land of the Lost
Tom Corbett Space Cadet
The Bionic Man
Re: Star Wars and 30-year-old “legends”
I don’t see why this is perceived to be a new thing. There was a similar gap between (the events of) Episodes III and IV, and exactly the same sort of mass forgetting happened there, too. (“Jedi? Force? I’ve never heard of such!”) Obi-Wan and Anakin went from being galactic superstars to utterly forgotten. The Jedi council that had existed for millennia was forgotten so completely that nobody could remember the concept – and this is so recent that Palpatine’s changes are still taking place; he didn’t dissolve the Senate until early in A New Hope.
And yet, there’s this sense of the Empire as ever-was, that its origins have been lost in the mists of time. It’s as if the Carter presidency were shrouded in as much mystery as the reign of King Arthur.
@Lisbet:
The two V miniseries are ineligible, being miniseries. Did you mean the 1980s weekly series that followed The Final Battle?
re: nominations
In my original nomination I forgot to indicate that I meant the original Outer Limits. I
Okay, TV bracket nominations…
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Star Trek: Deep Space 9
The Prisoner
…and, hm. So many choices, so many ways to choose, and only two slots. Time to regardez les disques…
Quantum Leap and Twilight Zone (all three versions) suffer from the same problem: as much as I like them, the thrust of their storytelling usually wasn’t about SFFnal elements. There were notable exceptions, and “The Paladin of the Lost Hour” may well be one of my favorite televised stories ever – but are those enough to nominate a series as The Best? I could even say the same for The Addams Family; there’s really more Stylish Weirdness there than anything fantastic/horrific, and The Munsters have that covered – even if I preferred Addams and company.
Doctor Who… now there’s a TARDISful of headaches. When it was good, it was really good – but when it wasn’t, oy vey. It’s kind of like Fry’s description of the first six Star Trek movies… or, in a sense, like Lost, which had some real clunkers alongside actual brilliance.
I think, in the end, I have to go with my gut. May the saints add preservatives to us:
Friday the 13th: The Series
The Greatest American Hero
(The latter, I feel compelled to say, barely edged out Batman 1964. The self-conscious deconstruction beats camp every time, though.)
Drat. I guess I’ll have to replace with Doctor Who (new).
In the end I decided against two of my favourite shows because, when it comes down to it, I mean the first three or four seasons of those shows and prefer to pretend that the ones after that didn’t exist (which is a bit of a challenge when they keep on releasing them). I tried to pick ones that as much as possible were things I liked all the way through. Similarly, I decided against Life on Mars on the basis that if I’d picked it I would have only meant the first series and not the rest. I also decided against things I loved but watched long enough ago that I’m pretty hazy on the details (Animorphs, The Munsters, most of Star Trek, a few others).
And it was STILL horrible. 🙂 *reclines, surrounded by forehead cloths*
Twilight Zone (original recipe)
The Prisoner
Quantum Leap
Doctor Who (Who New)
Slings and Arrows
Star Trek TNG
Twilight Zone (original, Rod Serling series)
The Prisoner
The Wild, Wild West
Robin of Sherwood
Leaving off TOS, Buffy, and Who, trusting that enough others will be selecting them to get them on. Unless of course too many others make the same calculation.
Sneaking in quickly with no time to read comments:
The Prisoner
Original Who
Blake’s Seven
S T Enterprise
Doomwatch – though I nominate in vein.
1. ST:TOS. It was a toss-up between this and TNG, but TOS had more of a cultural impact.
2. Red Dwarf. No explanation necessary.
3. Lost Girl. Criminally underrated show.
4. Eureka. A show that jumped the shark so many times it turned it into an art form! 🙂
5. Wonderfalls. Sorry Whedon fans, but in my opinion, *this* is the best tragically-cut-short-after-only-one-season SFF series.
Placeholder!
Great idea ! Five is too few ! I will list more anyway.
First Five
The Outer Limits (old)
The Prisoner
Star Trek: The Original Series
Twilight Zone (old)
Dr Who (Tom Baker years)
Second Five
Eureka
Warehouse13
Xena
Deep Space 9
Misfits
Sapphire and Steel
Torchwood
Friday the 13th
Beauty and the Beast
Star Trek Voyager
C’mon, Voyager, people.
Really, no love for Janeway?
And I’d like to have fit Quantum Leap in there somewhere too.
Sigh.
Maybe I’ll just pull it under the covers with me and all the facecloths, and just not come out for like a week.
And this is just nominations.
@Jim Henley
The whole reason for splitting Discussion and Nomination into separate phases was so that people could get File770’s…impulse to completeness, let’s call it, out of their system and still come up with a manageable consensus tournament field.
“Impulse to completeness,” that is such a lovely, polite way to look at it, leaving out, as it does, such concepts as obsessiveness, nit-picking, and the like.
@Xtifr:
I also enjoyed Wonderfalls. It bears noting that Tim Minnear, the architect of that show, did some fine work in the Buffyverse, so it’s kind of naturally Whedonish. 🙂
Doomwatch
Out of the Unknown
Red Dwarf
Survivors
Third Rock from the Sun
Painfully aware that on another day I may find myself voting against some or all of these.
INTERIM STATISTICS
Nominators so far – 39. Previous experience suggests that bracket participation tops out a little above 50, so this makes sense.
Nominees so far – 68. This includes a couple of possible ineligibles or mind-changes.
There is a very long tail on the power-law distribution of nominees. If I’d bothered to set up a Tableau Public account I could graph it for everyone. Suffice to say, fully 32 nominees have only a single vote. These are our “bubble teams” since they could end up inside or outside the Field of 64.
NOMINEES WITH A SINGLE VOTE:
Angel
Ark II
Beauty and the Beast
Blood Ties
Carnivale
Doomwatch
Dresden Files
Friday the 13th: The Series
Fringe
Greatest American Hero
Lexx
Life on Mars
Lost Girl
Men Into Space
Monkey
Pushing Daisies
Round the Twist
Space: Above and Beyond
Star Cops
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
The Mighty Boosh
The Six-Million-Dollar Man
Tom Corbett Space Cadet
Torchwood
True Blood
Twilight Zone (Revived)
V
Voyagers!
Warehouse 13
Wonderfalls
If you haven’t voted yet, and you are fond of any of these, word to the wise.
Five teams are battling for the four Number 1 seeds so far:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Babylon 5
Farscape
Star Trek: The Original Series
The Prisoner
Eight more teams have a decent shot at a Number 2 seed:
Blake’s 7
Doctor Who (New)
Doctor Who (Old)
Twilight Zone (Original)
Battlestar Galactica (New)
Firefly
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Red Dwarf
The rest of the contenders are likely to place somewhere in the top half of voting and have a good shot at being an 8 or better:
Eureka
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Xena: Warrior Princess
Addams Family
Slings and Arrows
The Outer Limits
UFO
X-files
Due South
Land of the Lost
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Night Gallery
Quantum Leap
Robin of Sherwood
Sapphire and Steel
Star Trek: Enterprise
Stargate: Atlantis
Stargate: SG1
The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
The Avengers
Twin Peaks
Wild Wild West
@Lauowolf:
You have no idea how long it took me to develop even this minimal level of social skills. 🙂
BTW, the statistics were as of my Placeholder post and don’t include the sets that came in after that.
@Shambles: I can treat “Dr Who (Tom Baker years)” as a Doctor Who (Old) vote, or I can count one of your second five instead. Your call.
Quantum Leap
Fringe
Babylon 5
X-Files
Farscape
Gonna need all the forehead cloths already!
There are a good eight on the one-vote list I’d dearly like to get through…
Another circular series: Blake’s 7. The *second* episode I saw has an amnesiac Blake being told he used to be a great rebel leader. The *first* episode I saw had Blake being betrayed and ambushed. It took a while for me to figure out that I’d seen the very last episode first…
Just five?
Misfits (UK)
Blake’s 7
Sapphire and Steel
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Quantum Leap
Misfits: When a bunch of teenagers on community service get superpowers in a freak incident do they dress up in funny costumes, use their powers for good, and fight crime? Nope.
Blake’s 7: When a bunch of fugitives get hold of the most powerful ship in the galaxy do they use it for good & to fight crime? Nope.
Sapphire and Steel: When your budget doesn’t stretch far enough to cover (decent) special effects, you have to get creative and rely on story & acting.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Rekindled my interest & enthusiasm in the Terminator franchise.
Quantum Leap: Scott Bakula. Nuff said. (We shall draw a discreet veil over “Enterprise”.)
Now where are those forehead cloths?
Oh, crap. I completely forgot Charlie Jade.
My TV nominations:
Raumpatrouille: Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffs Orion (not on the suggestion list, but definitely deserves to be there)
Pan Tau
Twin Peaks
Life on Mars
Misfits
Yes, I also love Star Trek, Doctor Who and the other usual suspects, but they hardly need my help, hence votes for the obscure.
Nominating outside the suggestion list is totally okay! The list is completely unofficial and only there as a memory prompt. Also because I like making lists.
Of course, my feelings might be hurt *sniff* but that isn’t important. 😉 (Kidding! Kidding! /badjoketag)
TV Bracket:
5. Twin Peaks
5. The Prisioner
5. Star Trek, TNG
5. Quantum Leap
5. The Addams Family
Twin Peaks is the show I watched most intensely, ever, and my first (and really, unmatched) experience of watching over and again, in groups, dissecting and riffing and what-iffing for hours. Like close(and over)-reading poetry, the really hard modernist kind. Also, it’s the best show.
The Prisioner is kind of perfect.
TNG: I love TOS dearly, and TNG can be cheesy in the way only things from your teens can, but there’s a huge soft spot in my heart for all of it. Except maybe Riker.
Quantum Leap was loads of fun. Dean Stockwell! Scott Bakula! I used to tape it and watch when I made it home, which in college wasn’t much.
The Addams Family: I was a gothy kid, and I learned all my English from reruns.
(I’m betting on TOS and Firefly making it in without me.)
Delurking to talk about TV shows!!! When I am with family or friends or co-workers I am “the guy who reads SF”. I get online here and I’m the guy who has read a little bit of SF. I didn’t vote in Kyra’s brackets because I hadn’t read enough of the books. I am kind of ashamed to say I’m familiar with almost all of the TV shows.
Firefly
Survivors
Prisoner
Starlost
Lost (if we don’t count the finale)
@BGrandrath
Hi! Nice to meet you. 🙂 No need for shame – all sf/f mediums are good sf/f mediums!
5, huh? Okay, let’s see…. My preliminary list had 14. Ouch.
Babylon 5
The Tomorrow People (late ’70s version)
Being Human (UK)
The Mighty Boosh
Twin Peaks
If I missed an eligibility ruling, I’m happy to regroup, change an eight to eight ones, and remember that addition is commutative.
My strategy here is to go over my fannish life, naming the shows I obsessively watched at different times. Then I culled, cruelly:
Nominees:
Tomorrow People
Beauty and the Beast
The X Files
Lois and Clark
Dr. Who (new)
Culls:
The Third Eye
Friday the 13th
Star Trek: TNG
Star Trek: DS9
Babylon 5
Man, I missed the discussion phase due to intensive work on “Alien Visas,” an animated sci-fi pilot I’m writing. (The pitch: an immigration law firm 30 years in the future–the paralegals have to get visas for actual aliens. Think “Futurama,” except set in an office.)
I am aware of the irony, but I am more aware of the fact that with a massive amount of freakish good luck, “Alien Visas” might some day make it into the “best animated sci-fi” bracket…
NOMINATIONS
CHUCK (he has a computer in his head! It drives the series, premiered 2007. And other ppl get computers in THEIR heads.) Possibly a doomed nomination, but a really fun, clever, modern take on The Greatest American Hero.
LOST– the hourlong series that still, to this day, can conjure up glee or chills just by thinking of a single line– “We’re gonna have to take the boy.” “WE HAVE TO GO BACK, KATE!” “I won’t call for eight years!” “Come on! Come on you son of a bitch!” (smashes rock repeatedly against [spoiler] device). Did it make some missteps? Sure. But as a guy currently pursuing professional TV writing, I will consider myself lucky if I write an episode of TV one-fourth as compelling as a season finale of LOST.
ANGEL (Whedon)– And talk about disastrous missteps. By which I mean seasons 3 and 4. But I’d stack seasons 2 and 5 up against most shows–“Smile Time” is one of the greatest comedic hours of TV, ever, and “A Hole in the World,” one of the best tragics, one that I will in fact never watch again.
FRINGE– Seasons 2 and 3 may be the best sustained string of sci-fi storytelling I’ve ever seen, with s4 finding its footing after a wobbly misstep. It is Orci, Kurtzman, and Akiva Goldsman’s masterpiece. No network TV show, save LOST, took more risks.
PUSHING DAISIES–I owe ya one, Meredith! (for reminding me that this was indeed sf).
Wild Wild West. Because I was a little kid and in love with Artemis Gordon.
The New Avengers. Because Steed and Peele.
Beauty and the Beast. Because Vincent was HOT.
Sapphire and Steel. because I still find myself thinking of that nursery rhyme episode. Even though neither sapphires nor steel are elements, damnit.
Babylon Five. In spite of the stupid fifth season.
Get Smart
Greatest American Hero
Wild Wild West
Wonderfalls
The Avengers
If Agent 86 is not sfnal enough, Red Dwarf
Voting strategically as I think my favorites will make it through without my votes.
The New Avengers. Because Steed and Peele
Peel ? If you mean Purdey, me too. If Gambit I will forever be mystified by the proclivities of others.
@rgl
My sister adored Gambit when we were kids, right up until they showed a repeat of the episode with the giant rat. She never forgave him. All of our pets as children were rodents.
Starlost? That’s that show from the 70s from Canada with which both Ben Bova and Cordwainer Bird were involved? I was just looking at that.