<![CDATA[Comments from Pouncer]]> <![CDATA[Comments from Pouncer]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Sexual Repression Is Science Fiction's Secret Hyperdrive Fuel]]> I've had Altered Carbon on my bookshelf for months, unread. Now that I hear that there's hot sexxin' in it, I'll probably pick it up. Thank you for bringing me this very important information! (in other words, if Mr. Morgan is lurking, sexual content can attract readership as much as it can drive it away)

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Trailer Reveals Who’s Hooking Up With Kirk and Why Scotty’s All Wet]]> This is truly a masterpiece of geek analysis. io9, I salute you.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Radio Girls on the Old-School, High-Tech Assembly Line]]> Shorpy is one of my favorite sites on the web. It's taught me more about real life in America than any history class ever did.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Are You Ready For Tobey Maguire's Robotech?]]> Anything but Minmei. *shudders* Or maybe she could die in the opening scenes? Just long enough to placate the old school fans, then WHAM. She's a smear on the road after a mecha comes through.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Heroes Has Lost Its Spirit Guide and Is Growing Slime Fingers]]> I decided midway through that this was my final Heroes episode. It's all so pointless that I no longer care about any of the characters. They've lost all integrity.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Why Has Heroes Failed To Save NBC?]]> It's more than 25%, if you get into the vagaries of the way ratings were reported last year. NBC combined the Monday and Saturday repeats to tout how well Heroes was doing when it premiered in 2007, but now they're citing only the Monday rating to make the viewing figures look better. If you go by the combined number, the audience dropped 42%. See here: [www.washingtonpost.com]

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Sci Fi Goes Beyond In Search Of New Brand]]> I've pretty much stopped watching Sci Fi, and it used to be one of my favorite channels. The shows I watched are still there -- Stargate: Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica, Eureka -- but the stories went in directions I didn't like, and the characters were robbed of their integrity and consistency. Plus, the treatment of female characters kept striving for new lows, and I couldn't take it any more.

Rebranding won't help bring me back.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on 10 Suckiest Video Games People Play In Science Fiction]]> I was prepared to go postal if Last Starfighter were dissed, but thankfully you agree with me that it was awesome. Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada... Who wouldn't love that?

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on The Russian Cold War Rocket That Still Does Heavy Lifting]]> The Soviets built massive boosters, while the US miniaturized components and made payloads smaller. Ah, rockets. How I love you.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Birthing Stars Tear Into A Nebula With A Fierce Beauty]]> Gorgeous.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on C3PO to Parents: If You Love Your Children, You Will Buy These Toys]]> I am still bitter that I never had any Star Wars action figures. My cousin, who lived in another city, had the landspeeder and a lot of the figures, and I played with them when we visited, but man. The envy still burns!

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Splashdown with G.I. Joe in 1965]]> DO WANT. OMG. I'll be searching eBay for this. You should see the hearts in my eyes.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Sarah Connor Producer Tells io9 The Terminators' Deepest Secrets]]> This show is tied with Burn Notice for my favorite of last year. I can't wait to see it return, and "little dark lean pieces of beef jerky" might be the most hilarious description of the Connors ever.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Time for a Max Headroom Movie]]> By far the best television show ever. Remarkable in that it only gets better as the 20 minutes into the future it predicted becomes reality.

I'm in favor of a remake, if only because then I'd likely be able to acquire pristine DVDs instead of chopped rips from when TechTV aired it a few years back.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Empire Strikes Back Scribe To Tackle Robotech]]> I have severe doubts that any writer could make Minmei tolerable.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Veronica Mars Reunited With Weevil On Heroes]]> Oh, wow. I adored Veronica Mars and Weevil was always one of my favorite characters. (Also check out Francis Capra's work as a juvie tough in episode 1x03 of The O.C., The Gamble. And yes, he is a descendant of THE Frank Capra)

For those of you not seeing VM as noir, I am boggled. And baffled. VM called on so many noir tropes, even if the visual style of bright and poppy.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on 25 Glorious Years of Loving the Ewoks]]> @PeteRR: where is the Star Wars universe Manhattan Project then? Or at least its D-Day. Plus, the Russian winter's gotta kick in soon, don't you think?

Poor Ewoks. I have a sneaky, covert love for them and their adorableness.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Superglue + Leather + Scrap Metal = Your Very Own Time Machine]]> Doesn't that resemble the time-travelling device from Voyagers, the early-80s show? I loved it then, but am scared to revisit it for fear that it will rank higher than Escape to Witch Mountain on the badness scale.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Stunning High Res Shots of Phoenix Lander]]> \o/

I swear, the past few days, I've been giddy over what we've accomplished with space exploration.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on The Ten Most Important Satellites Orbiting Earth Now]]> There's a good reason, aside from io9's demographics, that the list is U.S.-centric: check out this graphic. The U.S. does way more with space than the entirety of Europe, which doesn't even get into Russia or China (or Brazil or India or Japan).

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on The Savage Colors of Naked, Toxic Sea Snails]]> Freaky!

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Soak Your Head With The Greatest Cocktails From Science Fiction]]> My favorite is butter beer a la Harry Potter. 1 part butterscotch schnapps to 7 parts cream soda -- delicious.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Nine Reasons Why I Hate E.T.]]> I hate E.T. because my mother and older sister dragged me out of bed on a Saturday to see it. I'd far rather have slept in, and recall napping through large parts of the film. Never cross a child -- they'll loathe you forever.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Not Quite a Jetpack, But the Rotorcycle Is Still Pretty Cool (1960)]]> Anything used in Road Warrior is a-okay with me.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Martian Ice Ages Bolster Case for Life on Red Planet]]> Killer bacteria FTW!

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on The 5 Types Of Scifi Deus Ex Machinas]]> "Almost every season of Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who series has ended with some kind of unlikely miracle fix, but the first one was by far the hardest to swallow."

I protest. The Doctor defeating the Master's evil plan by marshalling the good will of humanity to turn into a ridiculous Tinkerbell Jesus was so hard to swallow that I'm still choking. More, it betrayed the season's theme of exploring what it meant to be Time Lord or human, and turned the kick-ass character of Martha into a mindless disciple. Bah. That's when I threw up my hands and said goodbye to the show.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on When Did Summer Become Science Fiction Overkill Season?]]> My diagnosis is this: studio consolidation in Hollywood (check out the handful of producers in the latest AMPTA negotiations with the writers guild vice the dozens back in the 1980 edition) has stifled creativity. That list of 2000s films? It's full of "franchises" -- I count three films that didn't come from an established property (comic book, novel, prior movie) or spawn sequels. Why? Risk aversion. Hollywood is such a nickel and dime game these days that they'd far rather make horrid pap of a sequel than take a chance on a new, fresh, and original artistic vision.

The first X-Man film was fantastic. So was the first Spiderman. Other than that, none of those big-grossing movies are ones I've enjoyed or wanted to see at all.

Movies are expensive to make, they're expensive to market, audiences are declining, and the businessmen in charge of studios these days want a guaranteed return on their investment. It's why I seldom go to a theater these days -- nothing appeals, and so few films have provided a satisfying experience across a spectrum of criteria (storytelling, characterization, consistency, theme, portrayal of women and/or minorities in a respectful manner) that I'm wary of wasting my time.

But those mass audiences who do go to the movies enjoy the effects, and we get nonsense like X-Men 3 or The Day After Tomorrow.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Old Doctor Too Grumpy For Madonna, Claims Barrowman]]> Eccleston is apparently going to play Destro in the G.I. Joe movie. The casting for that thing is bizarre, although his presence makes me slightly hopeful that it won't be too terrible. But then there's always Raul Julia's last role to scare me. Who knows, anymore?

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Closer Than Ever to a "V" Movie and New Series]]> Mice and gerbils better look out! The cats will have to evolve and takedown the lizards once their natural prey is denuded.

This news makes me kind of delirious with delight. V! Love of my childhood! Rise from the mess of the Red Dust and frolic again!

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Movie Superheroes Whose Secret Origins Aren't In Comic Books]]> Sky High rules. I wish Warren Peace had gone to my high school.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Chronotebook Wins Design Award for Promoting Nonlinear Time]]> Nifty. And quite replicable via notebook and pen.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Greatest MacGyvers of Science Fiction]]> @tuckerch: Interestingly (well, if you're as much of a space geek as me), the makeshift CO2 scrubber was notionally created far in advance of the Apollo 13 mission. The idea came up during one of the kajillion simulations and training exercises NASA ran before missions ever left the ground.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on One Pill Could Cure Radiation Sickness]]> @ratlas: I remember reading about that! (In fact, for anybody else who wants to know more: [www.scienceblog.com])

Gene therapy is another possibility: [www.scienceblog.com]

Or maybe radiation isn't really so catastrophic? [www.spiegel.de]

Pretty pictures of our eventual apocalpyse from a French nuclear test in 1968: [flickr.com]

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Top 10 Unsung Science Fiction TV Classics]]> @lascauxcaveman: SciFi recently announced it'll be airing Charlie Jade. I don't know how much they'll cut it for commercials and/or content, but at least it'll get a wider audience. The visuals on that show are amazing, and the concept sounds terrific (I have it, but haven't watched it yet).

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Top 10 Unsung Science Fiction TV Classics]]> Max Headroom is still my favorite TV show of all time. The prescience is amazing, and keeps getting more and more on point, sadly.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Build Your Home In TunnelSpace!]]> General Hammond? Oh, not that Don Davis.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on The Hazards of Cocktails in Space, 1955]]> @LisRiba: Given that the Japanese are going to be testing an origami spacecraft (yes, made of paper. Coming back through the atmosphere), I think there could be a bitchin' proposal on Behavior of Carbonated Liquids (malt and hops). It's for the people, NASA!

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on The New Age of Commercial Space Travel]]> The cost of throw weight hasn't come down in decades. That's what's holding up our colonization of space - it's still too expensive to achieve escape velocity and get stuff in orbit. There are some intriguing prospects on the horizon that might change that, at long last, but it's too soon to tell whether or not they'll work.

That said, commercialization is the way to go. NASA focused on certain technological paths because they were known to be fairly reliable, but that's not a good way to innovate. Get the private sector going, and you'll see lots of options. Some will fail spectacularly, but if one long shot pays off? It will so be worth it.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Please Help Us Send Google To Mars]]> @Jeff-Minor: well, they're already sponsoring the lunar X-Prize. Commercial is the way to go - government is a dinosaur.

Personally, I'm pretty excited about Japan's origami spacecraft. Maybe Larry and Sergey could leverage that technology? Paper Martian homes! Or, wait - how about living homes, with bioengineered trees providing oxygen as well as shelter? Awesome.

]]> <![CDATA[Pouncer commented on Battlestar Finale Rewritten, Depressing]]> I adore Olmos - he's so hilarious in his pronouncements of the show's grimness. I stopped watching at the end of season three and won't sample S4 unless I hear it's utterly fantastic and has continuity, but my love for Admiral Adama makes that a difficult resolution. It was such a letdown to see how they abandoned logic and consistency and nuance for shock value in S3.

Maybe the WGA strike and reworked episodes will have given Ron Moore time to reflect on his mistakes, but I've lost trust in the man. It's depressing (more so than the potential series ender!), because the first season and a half of BSG was really and truly the best television I'd ever seen.

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