I'm A Leaf On The Wind

As a preface to this rant, I say this: I am only a rookie in terms of my writing career, but I have been a science fiction freak for as long as I can remember. I’ve seen every single episode of Star Trek—”All Good Things…” was probably the best series finale ever—Battlestar Galactica fraking rocked and Firefly…well…hold on I need to have a cry…

Also, it’s quite possible that I have ridiculously high standards. I can’t count the number of times I’ll comment about this or that during a show or movie and my wife just looks at me with this are-you-kidding-me” look. She points out that no one else in the world would see the things I see when it comes to pointing out discrepancies or flat-out mistakes during movies. 

I beg to differ. I think there are many people out there, just like me, who see the same things I do and grit their teeth and bare it just like I do. I mean, there has to be right? Tell me I’m not the only one!

Oh, God…am I the only one?

Herro? Greorge?

Alllllrighty then, moving on.

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I was looking through recent sci-fi shows the other day to see if there was anything good out there to sink my teeth into and to my surprise was disappointed. I found a show called Defiant and thought it looked intriguing; cool looking aliens, interesting idea…why not? I face-palmed in under thirty minutes. Oh, it started out promisingly enough, but after an extremely arbitrary fight scene—the main character needs cash and decides sport fighting is the easiest way to make it—I had to shut it off.

I consider myself an educated Sci-fi fan and in my considerable educated opinion, I thought Defiance sucked a big fat huge one. I mean seriously, horrible. I laughed. My daughter can write better dialogue with a crayon...and she has.

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All the characters fit into nice little cookie-cutter science fiction stereotypes; the hero, the ugly scheming villain, a doctor with a bad attitude, and I’m almost positive there was a Chewbacca knock off thrown into the mix. (You don’t mess with Chewy! He'll rip your arms off!) It may have turned out to be a decent show, but I couldn't get passed the first 30 minutes. Aren’t the people that come up with this stuff supposed to be professionals? 

Okay, it might not be their fault, they had crap plots and flat, uninspired characters to work with, but come on! At what point do you tell the dude with the money...that's stupid...sci-fi fans are smart...let's not have the hero fight some abnormally large guy we all know he's going to punch in the nuts to win. Geesh, once Kirk does something...

How does crap like this get picked up for a second season and Firefly gets the boot!? I miss you Mal!

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So I went old school...okay not old old school...only somewhat old school, and started watching Fringe. I'm not sure what kept me away from this series when it was on TV, and after the ridiculously-horribly-catastrophic-stupid-no-good-I-want-to-shove-bamboo-rods-under-JJ-Abrams-finger-nails-ending to Lost, I'm trying to keep my expectations with the show low. But so far, it is enjoyable, smart, and usually unexpected.  We’ll see.

So that brings me to my Thought O' The Day: Don't eat a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in bed while watching a crappy-over-budget-lazily-written-sci-fi-knock-off-of-every-other-lazily-written-sci-fi-show-ever-made. Milk and cereal is hard to soak up.

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