(1) Jon Zeigler has posted his “100 Year Starship Symposium 2015” report at Sharrukin’s Palace.
Executive summary: I was quite impressed by the whole endeavor. It’s a fairly small technical conference, but it’s attracting serious academics and scientists, and it has a distinctive focus on cultural and social issues as well as science and technology. I can recommend it for science fiction writers, especially those of us who are interested in doing work in the “hard” end of the field.
As with all technical conferences, I found myself wanting to be in several places at once. There are always more technical tracks going on that any one person can possibly take in.
A set of three one-hour “classes” was held first thing on Friday morning. I sat in on a presentation by Bobby Farlice-Rubio, from the Fairfield Museum and Planetarium in Connecticut. The title was Neighborhood Watch: An Advanced Look at our Space Neighborhood, and it served as a summary of recent discoveries in planetary science. I follow interplanetary exploration closely, so I didn’t hear much that was completely new, but there were a few details I hadn’t heard before.
One item in particular stuck with me. Apparently the New Horizons spacecraft that just made a flyby of Pluto contained a small canister of human remains – a pinch of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto in 1930. That makes Mr. Tombaugh the one human being thus far whose remains are destined for interstellar space. Don’t know if there’s a whole story in that, but it’s a very evocative image.
(2) Although he hasn’t gotten as close to Pluto as Clyde Tombaugh, the Guardian proclaims David A. Hardy “The space artist who saw Pluto before Nasa”.
In 1950, a 14-year-old boy found an astronomy book at his local library. As he pored over it, a light bulb lit up over his head. “It inspired me, really, to do it myself,” says that boy, David A Hardy, 65 years on. Not to become an astronaut, but to draw outer space with incredible military accuracy. Today, he is the world’s oldest living space artist. He’s 79 and he lives in the suburbs of Birmingham, churning out visions of the universe while his wife makes him cups of tea.
Chances are, if you’ve read books by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke, the covers were painted by Hardy. He worked with Sir Patrick Moore for over half a century. He has created spaceships descending upon Big Ben for Doctor Who and the Daleks. His art has been the backdrop for Pink Floyd gigs, and he counts the Rolling Stones and Queen among his collectors.
Hardy’s work is part of a new exhibition called Visions of Space at the Wells & Mendip Museum, Somerset, from November 7-21. David A Hardy speaks on November 6 at 7:30pm.
(3) A website now documents the “Aliens, Androids & Unicorns” exhibition at the University of Otago (New Zealand) held March to May 2015, that highlighted sf&f collection of the late Harold Terrence Salive (1939-2012). The exhibition contained (amongst others) his almost complete run of Astounding Stories, numerous works by Van Vogt, Delany, C.J Cherryh, Jack L. Chalker, Poul Anderson, and Piers Anthony. Salive’s Collection was donated to Special Collections in March 2013 by his wife Rachel.
(4) To avoid spoilers, the release of the Star Wars: The Force Awaken tie-in novel has been delayed.
Walt Disney Co. is so determined to maintain the secrecy surrounding its hotly anticipated “Star Wars” movie that it asked its publishing partner to delay the release of a hardcover book tied to the film and forgo a potential holiday sales bonanza.
“Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” the franchise’s first new installment in a decade, will hit theaters Dec. 17. But the print edition of the novel, which will be published by Penguin Random House’sDel Rey imprint, won’t be released until Jan. 5, after the lucrative holiday gift-giving season has ended.
The unusual delay reflects Disney’s fears that printed copies of the book, which would have to start rolling off presses long before they hit store shelves, could be purloined by people who want to spill plot details online. The e- book will be released Dec. 18, since it is easier to control digital files before they go on sale.
(5) “Amazon opens its first real bookstore – at U-Village” in Seattle.
Bookstore owners often think of Amazon.com as the enemy.
Now it’s becoming one of them.
At 9:30 Tuesday morning, the online retail giant will open its first-ever brick-and-mortar retail store in its 20-year life, in University Village.
The store, called Amazon Books, looks a lot like bookstores that populate malls across the country. Its wood shelves are stocked with 5,000 to 6,000 titles, best-sellers as well as Amazon.com customer favorites.
(6) “Holy Crap, They Are Officially Making a New Star Trek TV Series” reports io9.
Multiple outlets are reporting that Alex Kurtzman, co-writer of 2009’s Star Trek and its sequel Star Trek Into Darkness, will executive produce a new Star Trek show through CBS Television Studios.
The show will premiere in January 2017 with a preview episode on CBS and then, in the U.S., move exclusively to the CBS video on-demand and streaming service, CBS All Access. It’ll be the first developed specifically for the CBS streaming service.
Quoting the CBS press release —
The brand-new “Star Trek” will introduce new characters seeking imaginative new worlds and new civilizations, while exploring the dramatic contemporary themes that have been a signature of the franchise since its inception in 1966.
(7) Far more surprising – incredible, really — is Fox’s decision to reboot Greatest American Hero. Deadline reports —
In a preemptive buy, Fox has given a pilot production commitment to Greatest American Hero, a single-camera comedy inspired by Steven J. Cannell’s 1981 cult classic. It hails from Dope writer-director Rick Famuyiwa, Phil Lord & Chris Miller– the directing duo behind the successful feature franchise based on another ’80s TV series by Cannell, 21 Jump Street — and Cannell’s daughter, television director Tawnia McKiernan. 20th Century Fox TV, where Lord and Miller are under an overall deal, is the studio.
Written and to be directed by Famuyiwa, Greatest American Hero is the story of what happens when great power is not met with great responsibility. An ordinary man, completely content with being average, wakes up with a superpower suit he never asked for and has to deal with the complications it brings his life.
Via SF Site News.
(8) Today’s Birthday Manned Space Mission
- November 2, 2000 — The first crew docked at the International Space Station. Commander William Shepherd and Flight Engineers Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko spent 141 days in space. Since Expedition 1, there has been a continuous human presence aboard the space station for 5,478 days and counting.
(9) Nate Hoffhelder responds to John Scalzi’s post about kids not reading the classics in “Culture and Relatability Are Why people Don’t Read Classic SF, Not Age” at The Digital Reader.
While all the points he made are correct, I don’t think he gets at the root cause of the shift in reading tastes.
I have trouble accepting the point that commercial availability driving demand because when I was growing up (in the 1990s) I frequented used book stores just to get those older books. I also combed through the library stacks for those three-, four-, and five-decade-old books because I liked the authors and wanted to read them. (In fact, there were a few early Heinleins that I didn’t find for the first time until the early aughts, and I still read them when I found them.)
Instead, I have to agree with the several commenters who argue that culture in the older books and the relatability of the characters have a greater impact.
(10) Harper Voyager’s open call for submissions runs November 2-6.
In this time of flux and accelerated evolution in the field of genre publishing, the editorial leaders of Harper Voyager Books are delighted to announce an exciting venture that will offer talented aspiring writers the chance to join the same science fiction and fantasy imprint that publishes such visionary authors as Richard Kadrey, Chuck Wendig, Raymond E. Feist, and many, many more.
For the first time since 2012, Harper Voyager is offering writers the chance to submit full, un-agented manuscripts for a limited five-day period. The publisher is seeking new authors with fresh voices, strong storytelling abilities, original ideas and compelling storylines. In this Open Call, Harper Voyager will be seeking out novels written in the Urban Fantasy and Military Sci-Fi genres. Submission guidelines and key information can be found at www.harpervoyagersubmissions.com.
The submission portal, www.harpervoyagersubmissions.com, will be open from noon ET on the 2nd to noon ET of the 6th of November 2015. The manuscripts will then be read, and all submissions will receive a letter notifying them of whether or not their submission is being offered publication on the Voyager list. As with every Harper Voyager project, the author will be paired with an editor, publicist, and marketing team in order to develop the manuscript and promotional efforts before and during publication.
The submissions and digital publications are spearheaded by Executive Editor David Pomerico. He notes that: “The last time we had an open call, we had over 4,500 submissions, and were able to add 10 new voices to our growing list. We know, though, that writers are always eager to connect with editors here, and we’re excited to offer them an opportunity to do exactly that. These are two sub-genres we are finding a lot of readers for—especially in the digital space—and I’m looking forward to finding some great new projects.”
(11) Thomas Rossiter declares that “My Hugo Must Be Acknowledged” at Pelican Magazine, though it never is made evident why the headline refers to “my Hugo.”
This controversy led to the largest number of votes ever received by the awards committee (just over five thousand). Not one of the Puppies’ nominees received an award. Many of the categories were resolved with “No Award” where there was no alternative to a Puppy-approved candidate.
The Puppies have on numerous occasions stated that their goal is to make the Hugos as democratic as possible, so their anger now that their nominees have lost seems hypocritical to say the least.
(12) A review in the October Audiofile praises the audiobook edition of Francis Hamit’s novel The Queen of Washington.
Narrator Melanie Mason finds a wonderful Southern accent for Rose Greenhow that adds a great deal to the atmosphere of this novel. David Wilson Brown uses a variety of tones and accents–Southern and Northern, as well as French and Spanish–for the various male characters. Together, the two narrators provide tension and a theatrical atmosphere to the story. Rose, a rich nineteenth-century player in Washington, D.C., society is a spy, first for the Confederacy and later for British and French intelligence in the 1850s and ’60s. The many plot twists of this historical novel make for an engaging performance by two smooth narrators.
Says Hamit: “I could not be more pleased for my narration team, who worked very hard on this and are the real stars. I do call this ‘alternative history’ so it fits (barely) within the genre.”
(13) A Princess of the Chameln by Cherry Wilder ($5.99, ISBN 978-1-5040-2697-0) is going to be published as an e-book for the first time, on November 17, by Mashup Press, distributed by Open Road Integrated Media on all major retailers’ web sites. It will be available as a print on demand trade paperback a month later. The sequels Yorath the Wolf and The Summer’s King, which together with A Princess of the Chameln comprise the Rulers of Hylor trilogy, will be published at three month intervals.
It has been a while since this book has been available—two decades, in fact, since the Baen Books paperback edition, which reprinted the original hardcover edition ofA Princess of the Chameln.
A Princess . . . is the story of Aidris, the heir to the double-throne of Hylor. When her crown is usurped by pretenders and she must flee for her life, she must fend for herself, exiled in a world of enemies, forced to fight to survive as she seeks allies friendly to her cause. In the richly developed fantasy world of Hylor and the realms within it that vie for ascendance, Cherry Wilder deftly balances politics and warfare with the subtly nuanced, memorable characters whose lives play out in this uniquely powerful novel.
Jim Frenkel of Mashup Press predicts, “If you are familiar with A Princess of the Chameln or the trilogy—you already know that they are Cherry Wilder’s great epic high-fantasy adventure. If you don’t know these books, I think you’ll have a great surprise in store. Cherry Wilder died in 2003, but her great works live on, and we’re all thrilled to be able to bring these books to a new generation of fantasy readers.”
(14) Free Special Speaker Event presented by the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society on Saturday November 21, 2:30 p.m. at the Palms-Rancho Park Library in Los Angeles, CA.
(15) Steven Moffat told Variety to expect Doctor Who to be around for years to come:
You are credited with taking “Doctor Who” to a new level. What do you think allowed this format to be rebooted so brilliantly?
“Doctor Who” is the all-time perfectly evolved television show. It’s a television predator designed to survive any environment because you can replace absolutely everybody. Most shows you can’t do that with. For example, once Benedict Cumberbatch gives up “Sherlock,” what are we going to do? We are going to stop, that’s what we are going to do. Most shows have a built-in mortality. But here is a show that sheds us all like scales; a show that can make you feel everything except indispensable. It will carry on forever, because you can replace every part of it…
In terms of longevity of the show, I think you’ve said it could go five more years?
It is definitely going to last five more years, I’ve seen the business plan. It’s not going anywhere. And I think we can go past that. It’s television’s own legend. It will just keep going.
(16) Last Friday, Chuck Yeager stopped by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum to say hello to his Bell X-1, the airplane in which he broke the sound barrier 68 years ago on October 14, 1947.
[Thanks to Wendy Gale, Roger Tener’s Chronicles of the Dawn Patrol, Gregory Benford, Will R., Michael J. Walsh, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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@ Camestros Felapton
I’m a planner for worldbuilding but a pantser for plot — I have to write the story to find out what happens, though I can see a few signposts off in the distance.
This first writing pass is to find the bones of the plot, so there’s a tight focus on props and scenery that are plot-essential, the supporting characters are as nameless, faceless and functional as kabuki stagehands, and even the main characters aren’t described physically (except the mammoth). I won’t really have a first draft until I make second pass to add some more scenery and give the objects on Chekov’s mantel some camouflage, and reveal the 3rd assistant carpenter into Fred (not a real name) who lost part of a finger when the chisel hit that knot last year.
If I hit a wall on adding plot, I’ll add word counts by going back and starting to backfill the descriptions. Hopefully, by then I’ll know whether the story balance needs him to be ‘Fred’ or 3rd assistant carpenter going forward.
Also, Maisie Williams is a little young to play Jame, but since it always takes years to turn hypothetical options into hypothetical shows, I think she’d probably be a convincing, athletic early-mid twenties when the hypothetical show hypothetically airs….
FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS – FINAL ROUND
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
I really liked Babylon 5 too, but Buffy has stayed with me longer.
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Again, never got into Who, old or new.
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
Star Trek: DS9. Some have commented that it ripped off “Babylon 5.” I never thought that. The episode “Far Beyond the Stars” was some of the best TV I’ve seen anywhere.
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Babylon 5
I will always vote for Babylon 5. I ranked it as the best television show of all time, and I meant it.
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
Farscape
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Babylon 5 (1)
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Done and done.
Championship Match
1.
SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMICSLEEPING IN THE HARSH LIGHT OF DAYBabylon 5 (1)
I enjoy both, but B5 had the epic scope with a lot of the personal woven in; Buffy’s “epic” meta-stuff kinda got silly. Plus Season Sux and Season Sux More didn’t help, although B5’s Season 5 (Oops, We Used Up the Good Stuff) was a deflation from Season 4, it’s true. B5’s pretaped finale was a lovely finale, Buffy’s was wonky.
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
Tie. They both represent classic SFTV wonderfully and spawned a lot of sequels, imitators, riffs, and so on.
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
Farscape has such excellent emotional range (happy laughs, gut-punching betrayals, sad sads), plus some good alien aliens. It could have been a great standard-bearer.
Inside Baseball Match
4. WHO SHOULD PLAY JAIME IN THE GODSTALKER CHRONICLES CABLE SERIES? HA HA THIS IS NOT A REAL CONTEST THE ANSWER IS MAISIE WILLIAMS.
When it gets to the top of my TBR pile, I’ll know.
1. Babylon 5
2. Classic Doctor Who
3. MST3K – seems like it could have survived a round or two longer if it hadn’t run straight into The Prisoner.
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Babylon 5 (1)
Seriously, Buffy is the only show that ever got me to write fanfic. No, you may not read it. Yes, it really is that bad. No, really.
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
Star Trek was sort of how I found fandom. Actually, it was Gerrold’s books about Trek that primed me to go looking, once I could. And I did. And here I am. And, of course, I hate Dr. Who. But this is a vote for love, not a hate vote.
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
Slings and Arrows, dammit.
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Babylon 5 (1)
Much of this, I’m sure, is due to the circumstances in which I watched them. I watched quite a bit of B5 as it came out, with other people equally as engaged, speculating about plot and meaning. I watched Buffy on DVDs after the fact, with someone who would rather talk at me than with me about them. That has to play a role in why I am just that smidge more enthused about B5.
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
I think my personal favorite series might be X-Files, but I can’t really say it was robbed. Especially given the last N seasons…
@John Seavey:
(sorry for my own lateness) Never mind then, as you were 😉
Bracket, which I failed to vote in last round, not that it would have made a difference, sob, sob:
1: Babylon 5
2: Star Trek, OF COURSE.
3. Twin Peaks. That you cannot see this means the Hugos are worthless!
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Babylon 5 (1)
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS – FINAL ROUND
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Babylon 5 (1)
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
Sorry, I expired in agony, voting on 1 and 2. No one left to do any voting here. But who knows, maybe if Cally ships me a dozen cases of forehead cloths, I can be revived.
Inside Baseball Match
4. WHO SHOULD PLAY JAIME IN THE GODSTALKER CHRONICLES CABLE SERIES? HA HA THIS IS NOT A REAL CONTEST THE ANSWER IS MAISIE WILLIAMS.
Do your own casting!
FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS – FINAL ROUND
Championship Match
1.Babylon 5. Heraclitus vs. Parmenides in space, but Socrates and his daemon win in the end. That and the story arcs and character arcs and a charcter named Alfred Bester make this by far my favorite science fiction show.
Consolation Match
2.Unable to choose. My own personal Kobayashi Maru.
Sour Grapes Match
3. The Mighty Boosh. My favorite comedy and maybe my favorite show of all time and I didn’t think to nominate it.
FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS – FINAL ROUND
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Babylon 5 (1)
Partly a revenge vote, but I do prefer Buffy by a hair.
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
No contest, it’s still Spockman.
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
Twilight Zone was robbed! It wuz a contendah, but wuz dun in by a yungah wippa snappa! In other words…take your B5 and get off my lawn. Grbtz…kids…no appreciation…classics…grbtz…grrrrrrr.
Inside Baseball Match
4. WHO SHOULD PLAY JAIME IN THE GODSTALKER CHRONICLES CABLE SERIES? HA HA THIS IS NOT A REAL CONTEST THE ANSWER IS MAISIE WILLIAMS.
Via time travel…Dianna Rigg!
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Babylon 5 (1)
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
Unlike most of the other brackets, I think this one is turning out fairly well. Nothing tweaks my sense of injustice.
Inside Baseball Match
4. WHO SHOULD PLAY JAIME IN THE GODSTALKER CHRONICLES CABLE SERIES? HA HA THIS IS NOT A REAL CONTEST THE ANSWER IS MAISIE WILLIAMS.
Maisie Williams is almost always the answer.
Regarding Jaime and Maisie Williams — you would need someone very similar-looking to play her brother. Or could Maisie play both roles?
Lauowolf
I am drawing a bkank on FNG. Are you possibly from the future and talking about Farscape: Next Generation?
Tintinaus on November 5, 2015 at 2:22 pm said:
Lauowolf
NewWho, Twilight Zone, FNG
I am drawing a bkank on FNG. Are you possibly from the future and talking about Farscape: Next Generation?
Now I want that, desperately.
(I was late getting my morning coffee, brain still not working.)
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Babylon 5 (1)
Very difficult, Buffy is in many ways the superior show, but B5 has more rewatchability and tells big political stories that Buffy never attempts.
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
Obviously. Trek has about half a dozen stories that you could legitimately call excellent. Who has that many in seasons 12-14 alone. Both in quantity and in quality, it’s strictly no contest.
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
Quatermass. Didn’t even make the first cut.
FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS – FINAL ROUND
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Buffy lost me at the end, but until then I loved it.
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Because I think the highs of TOS and Who might be about equal, but I’m pretty sure that TOS had less filler.
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
Farscape! (Is anyone surprised..?) (Also the fandom is ace. Raising money for a miniseries to finish everything up, booyah!)
Inside Baseball Match
4. WHO SHOULD PLAY JAIME IN THE GODSTALKER CHRONICLES CABLE SERIES? HA HA THIS IS NOT A REAL CONTEST THE ANSWER IS MAISIE WILLIAMS.
I haven’t read God Stalk yet and I don’t watch GoT but Williams seems like a sensible young person, so sure, I’ll go with that.
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Babylon 5 (1)
Both are worthy contenders, but I didn’t write an Buffy-based essay for my Greek Literature in translation class (Views of Agamemnon. It also included Time Bandits. It earned an A+.) Plus, see last bracket. Babylon 5 is a part of my courtship. I also keep thinking back to Ivanova naming the names of planets on the newscast, and the first six episodes of season 4, which needed at least two seasons of build-up to really sing. It also really pushed the idea of TV other than soaps having an ongoing plot arc, at least in North America (As I understand it, UK tv was always better at that). It has flaws (Sheridan does “a bit” too much of picking people for jobs because they’re his friends and cronies just one small example.)
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
Probably every show that lost votes strictly for being too obscure in a given region. “I tried a sample and didn’t like”, or at worst “I heard of it but what I heard was really not to my tastes” is much more fair than “I’ve never even heard of or sampled this.” So, Misfits, The Middleman, stuff like that.
@Lenora Rose
Ooh, I like that answer.
FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS – FINAL ROUND
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
Tie
They were both groundbreaking and influential in their own ways.
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
Battlestar Galactica (Reboot)
4. WHO SHOULD PLAY JAME IN THE GODSTALKER CHRONICLES CABLE SERIES? HA HA THIS IS NOT A REAL CONTEST THE ANSWER IS MAISIE WILLIAMS.
Maisie Williams.
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Babylon 5 (1)
Whilst the highs of B5 were, perhaps, never as high as those of Buffy, the sheer audacity of the concept and the fact that it practically pulled it off too means that B5 is the winner for me.
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
Once again, I will argue that there is no show on television like Doctor Who. Even Doctor Who isn’t like Doctor Who. It changes utterly week by week and yet it remains, indisputably, Doctor Who. There can be 12 (or 13, or 14 or however you count them) different people playing the central role, and yet they are all the Doctor. It’s the only show here that can be all the other shows in the contest without breaking into a sweat. That’s why it wins for me.
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
The Prisoner. Too clever for its own good, frankly. (Also yet another shoutout for Farscape.)
Regarding the GAMC reboot, I’m reminded of this interview with Keanu Reeves, whose response to the whole remake-reboot thing is “(Shaking his head.) America just keeps eating itself. Pretty soon we’re all going to get mad cow American disease.”
I just wasted several minutes trying to find an audio or video clip of Dave Emory saying “Food for thought and grounds for further research.” Fruitless. Argh.
Bracket:
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Babylon 5 (1)
I wish I could find the essay I read recently about how the problem many fans have with Joss Whedon is that although he seemed feminist and thoughtful back when Buffy was on the air, his thinking doesn’t seem to have changed or adapted since then. He’s still fridging women for plot purposes, and he still gets bent out of shape when his feminist cred is criticized. B5 wasn’t perfect, but it also doesn’t poke me in those sore places quite the same way.
Come to think of it, I watched all five seasons of B5. I drifted away from Buffy at some point (the Riley era, maybe?) and haven’t ever bothered to watch the ones I missed.
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Never got into Who, despite having several friends try (repeatedly) to persuade me.
Ack. Fell asleep on the couch: it’s a travel day, and I was unusually exhausted when I got home. No energy now to not only count votes but write up the results, so the whistle will not blow until tomorrow. Your administrator apologizes for this lapse in tournament and bracket service.
Jim Henley on November 5, 2015 at 8:00 pm said:
Ack. Fell asleep on the couch: it’s a travel day, and I was unusually exhausted when I got home. No energy now to not only count votes but write up the results, so the whistle will not blow until tomorrow. Your administrator apologizes for this lapse in tournament and bracket service.
Hey, you control the horizontal, you control the vertical.
FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS – FINAL ROUND
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Babylon 5 (1)
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
/god-stalk
Championship Match
1. Star Trek: The Original Series
Consolation Match
2. UFO
Sour Grapes Match
<sticks fingers in ears> LA LA LA LA LA LA
Inside Baseball Match
4. WHO SHOULD PLAY JAME IN THE GODSTALKER CHRONICLES CABLE SERIES?
back in the day? Jennifer Garner
these days, I wouldn’t argue with Maisie Williams.
This moose can vote here since all the contenders date from when I still watched television!
So:
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Babylon 5 (1)
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
The Prisoner. It was a “must watch” when we visited my grandparents on Friday evenings. Years later I discovered it was in colour, bought it on VHS, and enjoyed it all over again!
Championship Match: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Consolation Match: Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
Sour Grapes Match: Red Dwarf & The Prisoner
4: Not read God Stalk yet, but I’ll go with Maisie Williams. Heck, I’d probably go for Maisie Williams to play Jaime in Game of Thrones.
Championship
Buffy
Consolation Match
Star Trek, original series
Woz robbed
Quantum Leap
Scott Bakula is brilliant in drag; definitely Some Like it Hot quality about those episodes.
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Babylon 5 (1)
Babylon 5
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
More dificult then the first, but Star Trek in one other minute it might be different.
There was actually a continuation of The Prisoner written as a comic book. Have it somewhere at home.
WHISTLE BLOWS IN ABOUT 45 MINUTES
WHISTLE BLOWS!
Time to count up all the votes.
You just did that to wake me up!
Whee new write-up soon! \o/
Come on, Farscape! You can do it!
I gotta say, my coronary cockles have been warmed by all the Farscape love ’round here, but Iphinome’s coining of “puppet kickers” deserves a prize of its own.
I’m just sad Gabriel F hasn’t been around lately. She would have joined us in Farscape voting. <3
I think one person voted against Farscape in an earlier round, and commented that it was “just muppets in space.” My reaction (which I didn’t bother to post at the time) was “what do you mean just!?” The muppets by themselves are awesome—how many other toys can claim to have been covered by Van freakin’ Morrison? Add in space, and you’ve got awesome piled on awesome!
I mean, say what you want about the writing, or the characters, or the acting, or whatever, but those all could have been far worse than they were, and it would still be the show where Jim Henson designed aliens for us! 🙂
Also Muppets in Space is clearly Piiiigs Iiiiin Spaaaaaace! Farscape is a completely different show. Also with puppets. But less pigs.
I accept wheels of cheese, My Little Pony swag, and Hynerian pornography.
I heard (and this is definitely an unsubstantiated rumor) that at least one television station saw that it was a Jim Henson production, and decided to air it as part of their after-school kids line-up….
@Xtifr
Hopefully they figured out the error before it got to the end of S1…
FILE 770 LIVE-ACTION TV TOURNAMENT AND BRACKETS – FINAL ROUND
Temporal anomalies made these two matches unusual for the tournament as a whole, but while usual matches are all alike, every unusual match is unusual in its own way.
Consolation Match
2. GOOD NIGHT, GOOD NIGHT, UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
Star Trek: The Original Series (1)
Doctor Who [Classic] (3)
In the consolation match at the Lawrence Welk Memorial Coliseum, the Federation team built a comfortable lead. The superior intellect of the Gallifreyan team was no match for the Enterprise’s puny weapons – you know, phasers and stuff. Even the TARDIS team’s robot dog couldn’t – but of course it couldn’t. It was just a robot dog. “Analyze this statement,” said Lieutenant Uhura, the team’s utility player, “I am lying.”
“BEEP. BOOP. FRZZZ – !”
The Enterprise built a comfortable 11-point lead and relaxed as they prepared for time to expire.
“Kiep-ten!” said an alarmed Ensign Chekov. “The clock – it’s not expiring!”
“It’s some kind of damn’d time trick!” said Doctor McCoy. “We should’ve known!”
It was indeed some kind of time trick. The TARDIS opened a small singularity and used the local temporal dilation to its advantage, going on a 6-0 run to pull within 7. “If we can keep this up, we’ll pull ahead in another hundred years and then we can just let time expire!” said Six to his Companions. Not Number Six. And not Caprica Six or Head Six either. The Sixth Doctor. “Mind you, you’ll all be dead…”
“According to my calculations, their plan could work,” said Spock. “Our only option is to take advantage of the time distortion ourselves and – ”
“No, Spock! I won’t do it! Not again.”
“But Captain – ”
And suddenly the whistle blew. “How…” asked Kirk. The bridge doors tweeted open, and he had his answer in the form of Nurse Chapel.
“You people never paid any attention to me really,” she said. “So I did what needed to be done while you were arguing.”
“You don’t mean – no! NOOOOOOOO!”
“Yes,” said Nurse Chapel, “I slipped through the hole in time and killed Edith Keeler again. It had to be done.”
“#toosoon!” said Ensign Sulu.
“Dank meme, Ensign!” marveled Sarah Jane Adventure.
“Fair’s fair!” said the Doctor. “Good match. I didn’t see that coming. Let’s go, everyone! We may have lost today, but we still came in fourth, and we’ve still got much better lives than anyone else in the field of 64!” The TARDIS made that noise and faded out of existence.
“You monster!” said Captain Kirk. “How could you – ”
“Oh poo,” said Nurse Chapel. “Do you think I’d really kill a woman just as a means to an end? Watch. Computer: call the elevator back.”
The elevator doors whistled open again. Nurse Chapel opened the heavy door of the large contraption it had brought.
“See? I didn’t kill Edith Keeler. But the Doctor had to see you undergoing emotional trauma as if she were dead. So I hid her inside this fridge.”
“Ingenious!” said Spock. “Nurse Chapel, we have underestimated you all this time.”
“Sweetheart!” said Edith Keeler.
“Darling!” said Kirk. “But how – ”
“I grabbed her from the time stream in the moment right before…” Chapel noticed Keeler looking at her curiously “…Ouyay etlay erhay ieday.”
“I’m sorry, what – ?”
“Never mind,” Chapel told her. “Just starship talk. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to Yeoman Rand.”
“So thiet’s where she goat to!” said Chekov.
“You didn’t know?” said Sulu. “Ah. I guess not.”
“Captain,” said Spock, “for history to remain whole, Edith Keeler can never return to her own time.”
“Understood, Spock,” said Kirk. “Actually, I’ve been doing some thinking lately, and I’m just as glad. Miss Keeler, how would you like to see the stars? With me? Please.”
“I think I’d like that,” she said.
“And Captain,” said Uhura, “since this has turned out to be a comedy, we have to end with a wedding anyway.”
“You’re right, Lieutenant.” Kirk said. He took the hand of his betrothed and stared deeply into her eyes.
“I like to think we’ve all learned a lesson today,” said Edith Keeler. And everyone agreed that they indeed had.
Final score:
Star Trek: The Original Series 32
Doctor Who (Classic) 25
Star Trek takes third place!
Championship Match
1. SIX SEASONS (AVERAGED) AND A COMIC
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1)
Babylon 5 (1)
This match was a thriller, then it was another thriller. Buffy built a lead of as much as 8 points, but B5 fought back to within 1. Then time should have expired, with the Sunnydale Scoobies winning 25-24. But it did not! “WTF with this shenanigans?” demanded Willow Rosenberg, deemed Most Likely to Say WTF by the tournament committee. “Don’t look at us,” said Ambassador Londo Something of the B5 team. “I just got back from a cornfield. And all I can tell you about cornfields is that they’re really dark and pretty much all dirt.”
So play continued. The pace was slow because of each side’s exhaustion, but the Fivers began to score. In fact, they built a two-point lead. The Scoobs fought back to a tie while player/coach Buffy Summers dispatched her research division to figure out what the refs had done with the time clocks. Eventually Rupert Giles and Xander Harris found the culprits.
“Our bad,” said BTVS creator Joss Whedon. “We’d have gotten away with it too, if not for you meddling kids!” added J. Michael Straczynski, showrunner for Babylon 5. “We just figured, since each of our shows survived cancellation once, it was only fitting that this match go into extended time.”
“And, excuse me, just how much longer do you intend it to go?” asked Giles.
“Forever!” said Whedon. “Using this pocket watch that Twilight Zone left behind after they were eliminated.”
“From Robert Bloch’s ‘Hellbound Train,'” added JMS.
“You two are the biggest nerds,” said Xander Harris. “Give me that.” And he smashed the magic watch with a sledge hammer.
“Now, Willow!” shouted Buffy. Willow began her spell. “You’re done for, boys,” the Slayer taunted. “Willow’s spell will reverse the polarity of your warp containment field and that’ll be all she wrote!”
B5 Captain Sinclair and Chief of Station Security Garibaldi looked at each other. “Do we even have a warp containment field?”
It was all the opening the Slayer needed. She kicked them both down an access shaft and watched them fall inward to the core of the station. Finally, the whistle blew. Final score:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer 29
Babylon 5 – 28
Buffy the Vampire Slayer wins the championship!
Sour Grapes Match
3. WHO GOT ROBBED AND WHY?
Lots of wrong votes here – the correct answer was BSG – but prior to a formal count it looks like Farscape got the most mentions, followed by The Prisoner. A couple people said nobody got robbed in this tournament, which makes me happy, really.
Inside Baseball Match
4. WHO SHOULD PLAY JAME IN THE GODSTALKER CHRONICLES CABLE SERIES? HA HA THIS IS NOT A REAL CONTEST THE ANSWER IS MAISIE WILLIAMS.
Maisie Williams ran away with this one.
…and we’re back 🙂
Don’t reverse the warp drive polarity again Jim!