(1) The title of Jeb Kinnison’s review encapsulates his opinion — “’Tomorrowland’: Tragic Misfire”.
Having seen mixed reviews, I waited until Tomorrowland came out on cheaper streaming services. Directed and mostly written by Brad Bird, auteur of brilliant work like Iron Giant and The Incredibles, the previews looked promising — a story about the shiny visions of the technological future we had as kids in the 1960s, and a world where they actually happened.
(2) An old b&w photo of a scientist controlling waldos to diaper a baby doll is one of the relics in the Vault of the Atomic Space Age.
(3) William Shatner tells how his face was used for the mask that Halloween film franchise killer Michael Myers wore.
(4) “Jim Burns’ Halloween Reverie: Then and Now” from last year, at the local New York CBS station’s website.
Twenty-five years ago, youngsters at my door could see through the screen to a life-sized Superman and Batman that were just past me, in the living room.
On another night, every window of my home was adorned with special Halloween themed balloons, the merry Mylar reaching high into the October sky.
For another year, a wide assortment of latex masks of classic Hollywood monsters (a wolfman, a mummy, Planet of the Apes’ Dr. Zaius and creatures from The Outer Limits)–an amazing collection I had somehow acquired–peered out from those portals, gazing upon a lawn filled with a virtual galaxy of giant pumpkin lawn bags!
(5) How big did you say those pumpkin bags were, Jim? A giant inflatable pumpkin got away the other day in Arizona….
Diego Ramirez captured video of the 25-foot-tall jack o’lantern blowing around in traffic after it broke free of its straps at the Peoria Sports Complex.
“I was so shocked to see that it was like bouncing like a basketball all the way down the road,” Patrick Sparkes of Big AZ Promotions, the company that owns the decoration, told KPNX-TV.
The company said the 350-pound pumpkin broke free from its straps with the help of strong winds.
“We showed up and it wasn’t there and we spent the last 40 minutes driving around looking for it,” Sparkes said.
There were no injuries from the pumpkin’s dash for freedom, but there was some damage done to streetlamps.
(6) The Addams Family: The Broadway Musical evidently has been around for years, but it’s news to me!
THE ADDAMS FAMILY features an original story, and it’s every father’s nightmare. Wednesday Addams, the ultimate princess of darkness, has grown up and fallen in love with a sweet, smart young man from a respectable family. A man her parents have never met. And if that weren’t upsetting enough, she confides in her father and begs him not to tell her mother. Now, Gomez Addams must do something he’s never done before — keep a secret from his beloved wife, Morticia. Everything will change for the whole family on the fateful night they host a dinner for Wednesday’s “normal” boyfriend and his parents.
(7) The SJW viewpoint strikes again! A. J. Jacobs told NPR host Scott Simon some famous monsters aren’t as horrible as you think. I think I hear “Officer Krupke” in the background…
SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Misunderstood, misunderstood.
JACOBS: Misunderstood – that’s what I’m here to do is trying to salvage the reputation of some of these Halloween monsters. So yes, Frankenstein I think gets a really raw deal in the reputation department. We all think of Frankenstein’s monster as this monosyllabic idiot from the movies. But actually, in Mary Shelley’s original novel from 1818, Frankenstein’s monster was more of a sensitive intellectual type. He read Plutarch and Goethe. He was more Brooklyn hipster and less unfrozen caveman.
(8) A mysterious castle, a deserted village and things that go bump in the night are all in a day’s work for a TODAY team on the hunt for Dracula — “Take a Trip ‘Behind the Screams’ in Transylvania”
(9) Today In History
- October 31, 1926 – Harry Houdini dies. Harry Houdini, the most celebrated magician and escape artist of the 20th century, dies of peritonitis in a Detroit hospital. Twelve days before, Houdini had been talking to a group of students after a lecture in Montreal when he commented on the strength of his stomach muscles and their ability to withstand hard blows. Suddenly, one of the students punched Houdini twice in the stomach. The magician hadn’t had time to prepare, and the blows ruptured his appendix. He fell ill on the train to Detroit, and, after performing one last time, was hospitalized. Doctors operated on him, but to no avail. The burst appendix poisoned his system, and on October 31 he died.
- October 31, 2001 — Lovecraft adaptation Dagon makes its theatrical premiere in Spain.
(10) Today’s Birthday Boy
- October 31, 1961 — Peter Jackson is born on Halloween in Wellington, New Zealand.
(11) The photo comes from “Susan Beatrice Recycles Old Watch Parts Into Intricately Detailed Steampunk Scultptures” on EarthPorm, but here full gallery is here. Amazing stuff.
Beatrice’s creations bring boring old gears and machinery to life. She has the ability to turn ratchets and other tiny technical parts into a lively mouse, seahorse or fairy. The more you look at her varied artwork the more you wonder what this woman can’t do… as it appears she can make everything out of anything.
(12) How badly do you want to be one of the first people to see the new Star Wars movie? Air France can help you out.
Lines will form at the crack of dawn on December 18 as die-hard fans set out to snag the best seats to see Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens in theaters.
But some very lucky trans-Atlantic plane passengers will get the jump on them.
In what seems like a ploy to rope super-fans into buying very expensive plane tickets, Air France will be letting passengers watch the much-anticipated flick two days before its official release, on December 16.
The French airline is teaming up with EuropaCorp CINEMAS to offer the advance screenings for passengers on four Paris-bound flights, AF083 from San Francisco to Paris, AF065 from Los Angeles, AF011 from New York and AF009 from New York.
[Thanks to James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day, Soon Lee.]
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@Vasha
The world in Robo Bulls and Zombie Dancers seems to be teetering on the edge of collapse to me, so I could accept it as making some sense if I wanted to read it logically. (I wasn’t particularly reading it logically, though)
The first time I read Placeholder I got the impression that they were in there deliberately, which begged the question of why. On a swift reread, I think I missed that the main emphasis was that they were now trapped, and I can see the parallels with the journey in Robo Bulls.
It’s interesting that the one is working for me while the other isn’t. For example, the element where they were trying to glitch their way out of the sim seemed to me to break it back into a more logical mode that it didn’t really work in.
I’m having similar effects with Maria Dahvana Headley stories – some come together really well, while in others I lose the mode I’m supposed to be reading them in.
Um, Mike. It looks like I double posted. Could you delete the second one please?
I enjoyed The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, I haven’t yet started on The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, and have bought Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen, published earlier this year, on the strength of the first couple of chapters and the price of £1.99. It looks as if the book has done better than anticipated, since they are putting the next one out in hardback.
Has anyone tried the current K Parker ie Tom Holt serial, and if so, any comments? It started last year and is planned to continue well into next year.
@Tintinaus:
I suspect that is because the fan art category is probably a difficult one to get any kind of consensus on. I envision a thousand nominating ballots of a hundred different fan artists.
I’ve been reading the serial.
Not quite as much of “unpleasant people doing unpleasant things to other unpleasant people” as most of the other KJ Parker.
Enjoyable but it’s sort of strangely formatted in how it treats the main perspective character.
@Mark I think the world in “No Placeholder” was created to entertain human customers. For some reason, it continues to run long after the humans it was created for have stopped coming. The whole idea of AI constructs that have feelings doesn’t survive close examination (not with anything like today’s technology), but it works fine as part of the “what if” of the story. Likewise the notion that they think they can exploit a software glitch and escape from the system isn’t unreasonable. I can even imagine what that would look like in the diagnostic console. “How do processes keep leaking out of the simulation? I thought we fixed it, but we’re still seeing one or two a month.”
@Vasha I actually gave “Robo Bulls” 4 stars, so it’s not that I didn’t like it. I simply noted that a flaw in the story (especially when you think about it afterwards) is that the writer laid it on a little too thick. It’s the rare story that has no flaws worth mentioning.
Postmaster
Thank you. I recall that in the early days his work was rather predictable to anyone who was familiar with the grimmer aspects of Greek plays and Greek mythology, which, in fairness, have been pillaged ever since, so he is far from alone in finding them fertile source material. I just didn’t enjoy it!
Greg
It sounds like a combination of the bit in Deep Space Nine where the club owner asks them to leave the simulation running longer because he wants to play some music, and the Robert Sheckley story The Robot Who Looked Like Me; the latter is one of my favourites.
I quite liked the production of the Jekyll and Hyde musical I saw years ago, but then that production had good actors who may well have elevated the not-so-great material.
The Guardian has an animated info graphic to show the speed of a racehorse versus various competitors (a race car, Usain Bolt etc) but…
the list includes a wombat and a velociraptor and I think at that point the virtual race becomes interesting http://www.theguardian.com/sport/datablog/ng-interactive/2015/nov/02/how-fast-is-a-race-horse-kingston-rule-goes-head-to-head-with-usain-bolt-and-a-cheetah
I’ve realised I should have said more about The Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet; it’s had a chequered history in publication; it finally made it out as a self published book, thanks to Kickstarter, and then was picked up by a traditional publisher because it’s very good.
I suspect therefore that its timebarred for the Hugo, but please don’t rely on me since I haven’t a clue. I think the author may well qualify for the Campbell, and it’s an exceedingly good book.
Her Galaxy building skills are remarkable, and I’d love to read more books set in her Galaxy; she’s riffing on so many different things that sometimes you miss them, and then you have the obligatory 30 minutes of How could I be so dumb I missed it!
Well, at least I do; everybody else spotted it and is happily dissecting it. So, it’s obvious by now that I’m an outlier, a humble footsoldier in supporting mathematics based analyses. I knew it had to happen sooner or later, though I would have preferred later. Such is life*
*Bonus points are available for anyone recognising the song…
Related to Hugo art awards: is “software” a valid professional publication for respect to the Hugo?!?
Silly But True
Camestros Felapton: the list includes a wombat and a velociraptor
And the wombat came in 8th! Neat. (I think the tortoise is still running.)
I’m probably gonna give “Long Way to” a shot at my ballot anyway. If enough of us do, I think the extremely limited 2014 edition won’t count against it. Mind you, I’m only halfway through, so I could still be disappointed. But there are bits of the book that in lesser hands would be infodumps, and they aren’t! They’re cool! Campbell for sure.
Someone needs to mass-produce Katsus. A most personable clockwork octopus. Everyone needs to read the book.
So I can only outrun a tortoise, and maybe a T. Rex. I like the little grumpy thoughts the tortoise thinks as he trundles along, worth watching.
Oh, and even here in 2714, we remember seeing that photo of diapering via waldos in our youth, and thinking “Yep. That’s the only way I’d do it. No touching, in a room with a different air supply.”
Regardless of money, who wants their first time seeing the new SW to be on a plane? They’re terrible screening places, even the “good” ones, even if you get your own display or have a fairly large screen. It’s still TV sized. I guess if you were going to Paris that day anyway, it’d be a nice bonus.
I’m even savvier with money than the Puppy reviewer. I waited till “Tomorrowland” came on during a free premium channel weekend, so I didn’t pay for streaming at all. And that was only b/c we hadn’t spent the whole $1.50 to get it from Redbox at the corner store. He could have pontificated and been wrong about it for so much less money!
The live-action TV tournament and brackets reaches the Sweet Sixteen. Voting is now open on all eight matches for this round.
Just started reading Lightless by C.A. Higgins, from a recommendation on io9. Downloaded the sample and it caught my attention (the curse of the Kindle sample). So now I’m reading the book, and I like it so far. Feels quite hard SF, and I’m hoping for something good.
It’s apparently the debut novel from Ms Higgins; I suspect well see more of the name in the future.
lurkertype on November 1, 2015 at 6:23 pm said:
No one asked the Business Meeting this year for an extension of eligibility.
The trouble with the Artist categories is that they’re not actually for *artist*, they’re for works, sorted by *distribution ethod*.
Pro Artist: is for body of work in calendar year, distributed via publicly-accessible, paid methods: magazines, book covers, books.
Fan Artist: is for body of work in calendar year, distributed via methods normally accessible only to people who are engaged in fandom: zines, art shows at cons, etc.
The rules *explicitly state* that an artist may have works in both categories.
The web has broken these categories, because web distribution counts as “Fan Artist”, even if the artist is in fact a pro.
For the past three years in a row, the Fan Artist Hugo was won by someone a) without a previous nomination, b) who had been toward or at the bottom of the nominations list, c) whose work was largely distributed online, d) BY A LANDSLIDE. These artists are working on a professional level, but count as fans for Hugo purposes. Once they get onto the ballot, they naturally blow the normal fan artists out of the water — because they’re pros! duh!
Susan Beatrice absolutely qualifies as a Fan Artist, as I read the rules — because her work is “other”, not distributed via of the usual Pro Artist methods.
Do the Artist categories need to be re-jiggered? How? Should I make a stand-alone post about this?
You will. The author got a 3-book contract, of which LIGHTLESS is the first novel. (She’s the daughter of a good friend of mine, novelist Lisa Verge Higgins.)
@Greg Hullender
I was pretty sure the characters were ex-humans – they mention past lives and past bodies. Mind you, that doesn’t rule out them being AIs programmed to believe they are human in order to fill out the simulation.
@The other Nigel
I had Lightness on my “try the sample” list (which means someone must have mentioned it before), so I’ll be interested to hear how it goes.
@Stevie
The Long Way to a Small and Angry Planet is good. I think it puts her onto my Campbell shortlist. She also has a 2014 short story “Chrysalis” that adds to her Campbell-ness.
@Greg, Mark: what it is, is a matchmaking program, where people create an avatar of themself (idealized, naturally!) with some of their memories, whatever they want to present, and have those avatars socialize with each other; if they find one they click with presumably the real-life people will get along. It’s rumored that the avatar will be terminated once a match is found, one reason the heroine shies from commitment. Mark, you’re not wrong to see it as a sort of afterlife; there’s definitely a layer of symbolism there, this world as a Hades populated by faded ghosts (who eat the food of Tantalus), bounded by water with a ferry, and the escape has certain resonances with Orpheus & Eurydyce. Lois Tilton says “[A]s Claire illustrates, we can make our own hells. She reminds me of Jacob Marley, who wears the chains he forged in life.” There’s something in that.
Speaking of Fan Artists, I came across Patrick Brown the other day and I quite like his work. (Less annoying to navigate sample here.)
Wait. Does that mean RedWombat is eligible..? Not that our dear Wombat doesn’t deserve all the awards, but that seems a bit off.
Mind you there’s no rule against pro writers winning Fan Writer so I suppose it would be unfair to have one for Fan Artist.
But pro writing often is a different sort of thing than fan writing (at least when you don’t include derivative works fandom, which is one giant grey area), whereas fan artisting seems to be always essentially the same thing as pro artisting, just in a different venue.
It’s confusing.
The rules have always allowed that one can be a fan artist and a pro artist at the same time (since, presumably, the same person’s art could appear in pro publications and in fanzines); they used to give specific instructions on what to do if someone is nominated for both. However, under the current rule fan art must appear ‘through public nonprofessional display’, so if this is the actual art they make their living by, it should not be eligible. (This rule has been changed since the nominations for Randall Munroe.)
The meaning of ‘nonprofessional’ may not be perfectly well-defined; for publications ‘professional’ doesn’t just mean ‘money changes hands’ but ‘provides more than a quarter of someone’s income’, but just how this would carry over to the case of art published on the web is a bit unclear.
Red Wombat has art available via published books AND just hosted on her own site. She’s eligible in both. I tend to like her paintings and drawings that first show up on Livejournal more than the ones in, say, Dragonbreath. I’ll let her say which she’d rather be placed in, if she cares to opine.
She’s also eligible twice over for best fancast.
An artist can be simultaneously a professional artist and a fan artist, depending on the venue. Jack Gaughan won the Hugo Award in both categories in 1967. WSFS changed the rules to prohibit this, but a few years ago we repealed the “Gaughan Amendment” and thus artists are once again simultaneously eligible in both categories, albeit not for the same work.
The key distinction is that “pro” and “fan” aren’t opposites or “radio buttons.” They are “check boxes.” You can be one, the other, or neither. Being a professional does not mean you stop being a fan, and vice versa.
Master Ken:
My reading of the rules is that the two art categories really reflect different modes of *distribution*. They were set up when “Pro” distribution meant “public and accessible to everyone who could pay (or stand in a bookstore aisle)”, whereas “Fan” distribution meant “only accessible to people who were a part of fandom, read zines and/or went to cons”.
When I say the categories are “broken”, I mean that the idea that “Fan” = “limited distribution” has failed.
For instance, the Tolkien fan art of Lin Guo aka breathing2004 is better-known than his pro cover art, which are for Chinese editions. I *really* think he should be nominated for a Hugo in at least one category this year, but which one?
@Doctor Science
I don’t know about the Hugos, but they should sell those covers somewhere I can buy them! The one for Mount Char is amazing.
(Alternate covers have long been a staple of comics and magazines, so I wonder if at some point variant cover choices for ebooks will become the new “premium” feature)
@Doctor Science & Mark
The moment I saw the stained glass Mount Char cover I thought – aha! THIS is the guy who does amazing World of Warcraft/Blizzard games fanart! Yep, called it correctly. 🙂 I’d nominate him in the fan category. Gorgeous work.
@ Doctor Science
re: Jian Guo
Wow! Beautiful artwork.
I’d be interested to know what category to put him in also. Since he doesn’t seem to qualify under Pro Artist, unless his covers for Chinese publications count as published in a professional venue, I’d guess Fan Artist. He’s obviously a big fan.
FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS – ELITE EIGHT
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5 (1)
Twilight Zone (2)
(Coreward Region)
2. ROVERS
The Prisoner (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
(Spinward Region)
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Doctor Who [New] (2)
(Rimward Region)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Farscape (2)
(Trailing Region)
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5 (1)
2. ROVERS
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Doctor Who [New] (2)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5
2. ROVERS
Doctor Who [Classic]
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Farscape
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5 (1)
(Coreward Region)
2. ROVERS
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
(Spinward Region)
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
(Rimward Region)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Farscape (2)
(Trailing Region)
Arghhhh!!!!!!!!!
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5 (1)
(Coreward Region)
2. ROVERS
The Prisoner (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
(Spinward Region)
I can haz a tie? This is the one that is causing me to run out of forehead cloths, fainting couches, strong alcohol and bad language. The only thing better would be the Tardis materializing in The Village, and WIlliam Hartnell running for Number Two.
Interestingly (maybe), if it were the NuWho, then I’d have no problem picking The Prisoner. But these two shows are the apex of SF TV back from when I was a lad.
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Doctor Who [New] (2)
(Rimward Region)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Farscape (2)
(Trailing Region)
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5 (1)
(Coreward Region)
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
(Rimward Region)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
(Trailing Region)
Even though TOS wasn’t my jam, I still preferred it to Muppets in Space (Sorry, Farscape never got over that particular epithet for me).
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5 (1)
Twilight Zone (2)(Coreward Region)
2. ROVERS
The Prisoner (1)Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
(Spinward Region)
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)Doctor Who [New] (2)
(Rimward Region)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Farscape (2)(Trailing Region)
FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS – ELITE EIGHT
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5 (1)
Twilight Zone (2)
(Coreward Region)
2. ROVERS
The Prisoner (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
(Spinward Region)
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Doctor Who [New] (2)
(Rimward Region)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Farscape (2)
(Trailing Region)
I don’t even know who I’m voting for anymore. Whimper. Quantum Leap… Quantum Leap…
Oh really, you just have to keep going with this, don’t you.
(Confess, you invested the trust funds in cloths, didn’t you?)
FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS – ELITE EIGHT
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5 (1)
Twilight Zone (2)
(Coreward Region)
2. ROVERS
The Prisoner (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
(Spinward Region)
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Doctor Who [New] (2)
(Rimward Region)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Farscape (2)
(Trailing Region)
There, I did it.
I hope you are satisfied now.
Swooping in near the end, after telling myself I’d missed so much, I’d just skip it. (I took a trip, then took forever to get caught up; didn’t bother catching up on comments, psniff, ‘cuz I just couldn’t.)
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Abstain
2. ROVERS
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Gah! They’re both very flawed but wonderful. Uh . . . Farscape (2) by a nose.
BTW I feel like I’m in a game of Traveller, with the Spinward, etc. I keep thinking “Spinwar Region? That should be Spinward Marches.”
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Twilight Zone (2)
2. ROVERS
The Prisoner (1)
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
A word of warning: Lightless is a space opera thriller, not hard SF. The person who wrote that io9 article pretty clearly didn’t bother reading the actual book. (The section titles are named for the laws of thermodynamics, the book takes place on an experimental spaceship, and the author has a physics degree. I strongly suspect this guy glanced at those things, glanced at a general plot summary, and assumed he could plausibly bullshit his way through a review without bothering to read the book. He . . . did not succeed.) People who pick this up expecting hard SF are going to be disappointed.
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5 (1)
Epic SF vs. episodic, I choose epic. “Reflection, surprise, terror. For the future.”
2. ROVERS
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
For classic BritSF, I guess I’ll go with longevity.
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Doctor Who [New] (2)
Guess I’ll pick the Girl in the FIreplace over the One Girl in All the World.
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Farscape (2)
“This is your universe. This, is your universe on wormholes.”
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Twilight Zone (2)
(Coreward Region)
2. ROVERS
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
(Spinward Region)
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
(Rimward Region)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
(Trailing Region)
One of the five shows I nominated lost in the first round; these are the other four.
@Kendall:
Well, not all of us recognize the Imperium’s borders.
Amusingly, when I reviewed Traveller’s galactic direction nomenclature before the tournament, it turned out there were no official designators for “up” and “down.” Because of course Traveller used the jump-drive conceit to get away with a flat map.
Back to catching the new bracket before going to bed!
FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS – ELITE EIGHT
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Hmm, this one’s tough to compare. A multi-season continuous story arc versus visual short stories. Talk about apples and kumquats! But I still get a shiver down my spine remembering certain Twilight Zone episodes.
Babylon 5 (1)
Twilight Zone (2)
(Coreward Region)
2. ROVERS
This is close to my ultimate “meh” pairing. The incomprehensible versus the low budget. *flips coin*
The Prisoner (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
(Spinward Region)
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy totally slays it.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Doctor Who [New] (2)
(Rimward Region)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
With all its goofy flaws, I’ll vote for the series without which tv space opera might not have risen to take over as much as it has.
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Farscape (2)
(Trailing Region)
1. Serious headcloth time, but Babylon 5
2. Classic Doctor Who
3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
4. Star Trek: TOS
I am very happy to say I really like all the noms that got this far, so while there are sentimental faves I would like to see go further, from here on in it is all gravy.
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5
2. ROVERS
Doctor Who [Classic]
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Farscape
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5 (1)
Twilight Zone (2)
(Coreward Region)
Surprised that there still is something in the contest that I like!
1. HOW TO SERVE MAN
Babylon 5 (1)
2. ROVERS
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
3. ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER THAT YOU’LL EVER DO
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
4. CGI IS FOR THE WEAK
Farscape (2)