Hard News: Flu diversions
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Back to Survivor...
Most memorable thing for me was that blue, woolly, short cropped jacket the dark haired girl with the bucked teeth and sibilant wore. We must have had a new fangled colour tv (unfortunately not one of those ones with an adjustable green line - any green lines we had were likely due to valve failure and involved a call to Tisco) which is why I know it was blue, though I have a memory of B&W episodes, which could have been due to the strikes the BBC used to have.
Oh and the mad mad welshman with the really bucked teeth
And the opening credits.
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I don't know if its for the same reason as me, but I found the use of modern idiom in the dialogue in The Steel Remains really jarring. I read about half the book before I realised what was bothering me. Then, once I'd worked that out, I actually started enjoying it. Weird.
Also, behold the horror of the Terry Goodkind TV show. By the guy that did Xena. With Guy Warner... erm... Craig Parker as the super bad guy
Low budget, syndicated, objectivist bollocks! Hilarious.
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Eddie,
Could have been the modern idiom. But it was super cool when the star says 'fuck' (in a different font) in Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Maybe you can get away with it now and then but not wholesale.
Yep, the Goodkind show is kind of stinky. But HBO's doing Game of Thrones (hopefully - a pilot's been commissioned), which has massive potential.
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Also, behold the horror of the Terry Goodkind TV show. By the guy that did Xena. With Guy Warner... erm... Craig Parker as the super bad guy
Low budget, syndicated, objectivist bollocks! Hilarious.
As I said when I first heard about this, at least they're not fragging something I love.
In fact, let me quote from that link, and the always apposite jsr:
I have read Atlas Shrugged already, and rolled my eyes at it. I don't need to read it again while it's wearing a wizard hat and robe and calling itself Faith of the Fallen
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Agreed, Craig - all hail TOR. Pan McMillan, the UK branch, publishes Hal Duncan and Jeff Vandermeer - who are both seriously awesome, but way, way more weird than the norm for commerical skiffy.
Tom Doherty is a legend for a reason -- and Tor/Forge is one of those exceptions that proves the rule about indies getting assimilated into multi-national media corporates being very bad news indeed. He's not only got a rare balance between good taste and fine commercial instincts, but he's got some serious talent on the editorial side, when other publishers are cutting away the backroom muscle and (not surprisingly) seeing their lists dumb down and bland out. I've read of people who've moved to Tor just because they know their work won't be treated as nothing more than a profit centre in the hands of people like Teresa & Patrick Nielsen Hayden or David Hartwell, who are serious fans and considerable writers in their own right.
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Oh and the mad mad welshman with the really bucked teeth
And the opening credits.
"Rrrregimental champion" shooter he was. I channel the guy whenever I want to reclaim my welsh accent.
And let's face it, I'd forgotten, but Carolyn Seymour was really hot. I note that she went on to a regularish spot as a Romulan in one or other of the Star Trek franchises.
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I don't need to read it again while it's wearing a wizard hat and robe and calling itself Faith of the Fallen.
I cannot read that sentence without thinking of this. (NSFW)
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I don't need to read it again while it's wearing a wizard hat and robe and calling itself Faith of the Fallen.
I cannot read that sentence without thinking of this. (NSFW)
Priceless.
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Jones' law - as an internet discussion progresses, the probability of it turning into a discussion about science fiction approaches 1 :-)
I recall a dystopian British kids' show in the early 80s that sounds like The Survivors, although I remember it as The Changes. For some reason, pylons featured in it as images of evil. As in, the camera would zoom in on a pylon and the scary music would play. No idea what it was about, but I've never been keen on pylons since (also that educational safety film with the kid who goes to get his frisbee in the substation, whose trousers catch on fire. Brr).
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Most memorable thing for me was that blue, woolly, short cropped jacket the dark haired girl with the bucked teeth and sibilant wore.
Well, I found it rather odd how damn clean and well-groomed everyone was, but I saw a documentary a few years back where someone made the good (and rather obvious, on reflection) point that it's damn hard to maintain continuity when everyone is constantly lathered in dirt.
But what's funny is what doesn't change -- the really disquieting thing about 'The Fourth Horseman' is that there's a lot of grumbling about the trains running late, the roads being gridlocked, the Grant's housekeeper can't get through to her sister... and nobody is that concerned. Because shit happens, and its not going to change just because you make a fuss. The world's doomed before anyone really notices.
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I recall a dystopian British kids' show in the early 80s that sounds like The Survivors, although I remember it as The Changes. For some reason, pylons featured in it as images of evil. As in, the camera would zoom in on a pylon and the scary music would play. No idea what it was about, but I've never been keen on pylons since (also that educational safety film with the kid who goes to get his frisbee in the substation, whose trousers catch on fire. Brr).
Assuming you haven't read it already, you might get a wee frisson from Nigel Cox's Cowboy Dog, in which pylons exercise a creepy sort of control over landscapes and people. I was and remain pretty damn impressed with the book in general.
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And let's face it, I'd forgotten, but Carolyn Seymour was really hot.
She had a quite gratuitous through-frosted-glass shower scene in the original series -- which was replayed by the Abby character in the new one, but far more modestly. It's funny what you could do in the 70s.
I always liked Lucy Fleming better though.
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And let's face it, I'd forgotten, but Carolyn Seymour was really hot. I note that she went on to a regularish spot as a Romulan in one or other of the Star Trek franchises.
Just to geek out to the point of being utterly pathetic, Seymour was in two episodes of TNG as two different Romulans, then another two episode of Voyager where we discover the rather distubing factoid that Captian Janeaway favourite mode of relaxation is taking the lead in a Jane Eyre-ish holographic fantasy.
Though if you really want to geek out, Guy Siner -- probably best known as the ever so slightly camp Lt. Gruber in Allo! Allo! is one of only nine actor to have speaking roles in episodes of both Star Trek and Doctor Who. Gave me a bit of a turn seeing him as a very uncamp jackbooted fascist in "Genesis of The Daleks".
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Hah - I just discovered that Lucy is Ian Fleming's niece!
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I recall a dystopian British kids' show in the early 80s that sounds like The Survivors, although I remember it as The Changes. For some reason, pylons featured in it as images of evil. As in, the camera would zoom in on a pylon and the scary music would play. No idea what it was about, but I've never been keen on pylons since (also that educational safety film with the kid who goes to get his frisbee in the substation, whose trousers catch on fire. Brr).
__The Changes__ -- based on a pretty good trilogy of YA novels which are inexplicably out of print given the morbid imaginations of your average teenager -- was broadcast in the UK in 1975, repeated once the next year and never seen again. As far as I'm aware the show has never had any kind of official release on VHS or DVD, but when did trivial considerations like that prevent the formation of a cult following.
If my trivia-clotted memory serves, "the changes" were caused by builders disturbing the grave of Merlin or some mystical artefact, which quite nicely decides to return England to a greener and more pleasant state without all that horrible, noisy polluting technology. In the first book, the POV character is a girls who is separated from her family and falls in with a family of Sikhs (who for some reason are unaffected by the mystical technophobia), but proving some things don't change after all they adopt her as a "canary" because unwittingly finding themselves the target of murderous rage is not a good thing at all.
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But there's a pretty clear steer at the end of the premiere that this is no mere mutation, but a human folly -- which I personally found a bit depressing.
Then you probably don't want to read the Germ Warfare section of this Wired story then.
If they're going to reboot anything, it should be Blakes 7. Truly original bastard sci-fi.
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If they're going to reboot anything, it should be Blakes 7. Truly original bastard sci-fi.
Be careful what you wish for, Zippy! I suspect Eddie Izzard is the only actor today who could bring off Supreme Commander Servalan -- for whom there was no deed too nefarious, no set too wobbly, or shitty quarry too treacherous, not to make the effort to have your dominatrix 'do, slinky gown and spike heels absolutely immaculate.
Bow before Jacqueline Pearce - what Joan Collins would be like if she was a barking mad sociopath.
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Oh enough already, what blasphemy.. I have never understood the witless obsession to 'remake' great things - resurrect - sure, extend - okay, continue - fine but saddo remaking - never. Survivors and Blake's Seven are wonderful examples of a certain time and style of SF. But why do people seek to diminish such wonderful things by remaking them - it almost always ends up as a minor tragedy.
What I'd much prefer to see is the Survivors set 20 years on - continuing the original series, expanding on the story. Better yet, repeat the original series first then run the 20 years on series. What happened to Greg and Jenny. Ditto B7 - or at lest that universe (maybe they really are all dead 'Blake...Avon, is it really you...you betrayed...us...me..no bang..bang..bang etc').
It works for Doctor Who (okay okay there are other factors at play there) but imagine for a second that the BBC sat down in 2004 and said, bugger it, lets just remake thee whole thing from the beginning again with some current stars - lets say Michael Palin as the Doctor and one of the kids from Britain's got taken as his grand daughter Susan, Russell Brand as Ian, and Jill Graham as whatever the other teacher was called.
Isn't it a sad sign of the lack of imagination, the tired recycling (in bad sense of recycling) that there is so much retreading. Colourise Casablanca, refilm Brideshead, gadd, I hope I'm not around to see the remake of Bladerunner.
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doh...that should have read 'and one of the kids from 'Britain's got Talent' as his grand daughter
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I can bring you an anecdoctor. I have a friend who's a teacher. She always gets sick in the holidays, particularly the holidays after the winter term.
In the first couple of years of teaching, my body used to collapse on the first day of most holiday periods. Now, however, after 12 years I seem to have an uber immune system. Either that or I'm just a hardened old bitch. I suspect it's the latter.
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@Rich
Got a reference?
Try an undergraduate immunology textbook. I am a mere physiologist, immunology is simply details dear boy.
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Now, however, after 12 years I seem to have an uber immune system.
You work at a kindergarten, right? That's like a huge virus incubator, I bet that by now you're immune to all disease known to man, woman and child.
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If they're going to reboot anything, it should be Blakes 7. Truly original bastard sci-fi.
The Library in Finchley in North London had the complete series of B7 on VHS when we lived there. Over maybe 8 months I worked my way through the whole thing. Rumour is that Paul Darrow is trying to remake it or make new episodes.
Russell Brand as Ian
Lets have RB as far away from anything as we can, ok? He can't act and isn't funny. I can do without him gurning at the camera every two seconds.
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Tomorrow People, anyone?
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Lets have RB as far away from anything as we can, ok? He can't act and isn't funny. I can do without him gurning at the camera every two seconds.
The man's charms remain profoundly mysterious to me too.
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