Comment Stream

Re: TNG S5: I, Borg

I'd argue that "survival is always desired" isn't necessarily true though. If surviving meant becoming a monster, if it meant me slaughtering millions of brainwashed people, I'd rather die. I'd be alive but it wouldn't be much of a life worth living after that. I don't think surviving is enough, because after you've done what you had to do to survive, you still have to look at yourself in the mirror.

Re: TNG S5: Cause and Effect

@ grumpy_otter
That was my first thought too, but years later I watched it again and I started to think the Bozeman was only in the loop for 17 days as well. They fall into some sort of time slip, go forward in time decades, then hit the Enterprise and repeat that for 17 days. Or to put it another way, the Enterprise and the Bozeman have to go through an equal amount of iterations, or else what was the Bozeman hitting before the Enterprise came along?

But I can replace that mindbender with another one...the story implies there's some kind of bubble around the area that's rewinding, since they get time stamps from an outpost nearby, so the rest of the universe kept on going as normal. What would happen if someone came across this situation? Presumably they could change the course of events and stop the loop?

Re: This just in: Cigarettes deadly; cigarette warnings hilarious

Do they think I'm going to buy a pack of cigarettes, look at the pack and go "It causes cancer? Holy crap, why didn't anyone tell me!" If it's about straining the health care system, I don't know why they don't just take all smoking-caused operations off the public health care list and be done with it. Just to kill my own point though, it's possibly a slippery slope ...should alcohol-related operations be taken off the list? Obesity?

Actually...the US doesn't have health care does it? Hehe, ignore everything I just said! Not sure what this is really about then.

Re: CAP S1: Caprica Canceled

I think I was enjoying Caprica more than most. It was clearly a flawed creation, but it was an interesting experiment I thought too. It came across to me how they intended, like a family drama with some corporate espionage thrown in that just happened to be in a sci-fi setting, which I thought was great.
In that last episode, I just started to get a feeling of where this was all going. Also the actor that plays Joseph's brother said the finale had a twist that left him reeling, which is intruging, and there was a flashback episode coming up focusing on the Adamas when they were kids I was looking forward to.
Oh well. Not super enthused about Blood and Chrome, but will see how it goes.

I third that comment on The Walking Dead, I was very impressed by the pilot. How have we not had a zombie apocalpyse TV show until now?

I will always be faithful Jammer! I've enjoyed your single episode reviews of parts of Lost, 24, SVU. Reviews every week are reliable, good for bringing fans back, but the variety of reviewing single episodes of whatever takes your fancy is good too.

Re: Election 2010: Here comes the crazy

I read that too fast and thought it said "because he threatened to set a bunch of Koreans ablaze". Well, "attention-getting" was right in my case, heh. And I work as a court transcriptionist! Be afraid, be very afraid (it's okay, there's three whole letters between guilty and not guilty).

Also grats on your upcoming wedding Jammer!

Re: Lost series finale review: 'The End'

That's about the rating I had in mind too, Jammer. I've obssessed over this show since Day 1 and I found the finale satisfying. I felt the answers they presented were good, though I wished the whole narrative as a whole "fit" better (but serialised writing is a tough job, people forget. I can't imagine writing a chapter at a time and releasing it, having no way to go back and tweak what's come before, it's a unique beast!).

I use Walt all the time as the best example. I think many people wanted him addresed in season six, wanted to know how he was special. The answer seems to be in the end, he just was. And I'm fine with that. No one watches True Blood and asks "why is Sookie telepathic? I want answers!" She just is. I think Lost had a lot of questions leveled at it that were never questions in the first place.

On the other hand, I did hope Walt would come up in some way purely to answer...well, "why" he was special, but as in what was his function? From a writing point of view, was his specialness introduced for a reason or was it by itself his story? (Possibly a bad example actually, I think they wrote out Malcolm David Kelly purely because of his growth spurt and if not for that his story might have turned out differently). Again, this is all material you would clean up a second draft, if you had that luxury.

People also wanted an explanation for the numbers, which was something I didn't expect. I saw people demanding to how why the numbers kept reappearing. I thought it was just a stylistic flourish. You don't watch American Beauty and wonder where all the roses come from. And really you can't answer that, given that numbers are a human concept anyway. If they turned out to be the combination to a lock or some kind of plot device, you'd still be left wondering how they kept inserting themselves in the lives of the Losties. It's not a question you can answer.

The fact that the numbers of the last six candidates turned out to be the numbers is either another example of the "flourish", or maybe shows that those six people were so important that the universe was trying to tell them something, at best.

Things that really blow my mind are 'what is the Source', 'what is the Island' type questions. How do you expect them to explain that? What is the origin of the planet? The Source was probably always there. People even want to know who was the guardian before Jacob's mother, who was the first guardian? But how far back can we expect them to go?


The real brilliance and the main reason I respect the finale, whether it was intentional or not, was that it split the fans into Men of Science and Men of Faith. I thought the show was always fantasy at heart, so a Gaia-like "heart of the island" that exists there but also exists inside us all, as if the life of the island is also the life of us all, didn't seem like a stretch. No more than a sentient cloud of smoke anyway. A great number of fans though were expecting sciency explanations for everything though, I think. I didn't realise that before season six, although it's fair enough, the fantasy elements were not as overt until season six. I'm not even religious or particularly faithful, but I'm happy to take fiction on its own terms.

I'm not a complete finale defender though, hehe. Like I said above, the narrative didn't always "fit". Walt seemed functionless, a dead end. Lapidus was I suppose required to fly people around, but I wish they had the time to flesh him out.

Worst of all for me, the whole theme of birth and fertility felt unfinished. Given birth was possible in 1977 at the latest, they seemed to be implying the detonation of Jughead somehow caused it. Again, an answer I'll deal with, though I think they could have spelt it out more clearly. Blowing up a bomb next to the source of life might lead to unexpected consequences like that I suppose (and blow people forward in time apparently). I don't know, there's a shaky, fantasy logic to it but I don't find any of that satisfying.

Jacob's cabin is also infuriatingly messy. The Others thought it was Jacob in there but it was actually MIB trapped in ash (muttering help me to Locke and turning into Christian to confuse Hurley and us). But he was also outside as the smoke monster? Was his consciousness trapped in the cabin? Again, maybe you can piece that one together and I like my fiction to be hard work, but a bit more "flow" to the whole thing would be nice.

Sorry for the lost post, a mixed bag of pros and cons. Overall, I enjoyed it. It wasn't the tidy ending I hoped for regarding the mythology, but it answered enough to leave me feeling content and hit most of the rights character notes.


PS As an aside regarding Sayid and Shannon. I didn't like that either, but here's the thought I had to explain it. I think sometimes love can be a plague on our souls. Even between two good people who love each other, sometimes they're not meant to be and they'll push and fight for it so hard until destroy everything around them. Just like the whole theme of letting go, Sayid had to let go of his love for Nadia.

It's sort of oddly related to why Sawyer and Juliet worked, despite how awkward it felt at first. Kate and Sawyer were cut from the same cloth, they fit each other so well...but their relationship would have been anything but smooth. It's like their feelings for each other were *too* epic, too big for themselves. Juliet on the other hand was a nice counterpoint for him, calmed him down. Their relationship clicked with fans, I think, because it felt normal somehow. They didn't end up together because of a fate-induced, meant-to-be, perfection, but because they liked each others company and decided to give it a shot.

Does that make sense? Even in the afterlife, maybe Sayid was aware that he loved Nadia too much. You've got OMG-meant-to-be, I've-spent-years-searching-for-you Nadia. Or you've got Shannon, bit of a fling, but it was comfortable, it kind of worked. Their love wasn't bigger than each other, it was the right size.

Re: Celebrating 15 years. One more year until this site can drive.

Well, my IE favourite still points to st-hypertext.com, one day you'll drop that forwarding address and I'll momentarily freak out (whaaat? It's gooone!).

I'm guessing I found your website through a strange chain of internet browsing (you know the ones, where you set out to look up a train time and, six degrees of clicking later, find yourself reading about Guam on wikipedia for no particular reason).

I'm struggling to remember exactly when...I think about 2001, I was at uni at the time and never read a DS9 review 'live', only Voyager, so that'd be about right. I was happy to find a reviewer that posted long, interesting, considered essays on each episode, and it helped that we had similar general responses to DS9 (yay) and VOY (sigh) (although, I thought those Ferengi episodes had their moments).

Eagerly await your opinions on everything and anything (especially Lost, have I mentioned that? Oh yeah, I have. I'll stop now =P )

Re: '24': The lamentable Dana Walsh situation

re: The Ryan Chappelle comment above me, that always struck me as such a bizarre moment, in television and in writing. I'm not sure what they were getting at. I think it may supposed to have been a "Jack makes a hard choice" moment, or a "Jack must sacrifice one for the needs of the many". But it really didn't work.

Now had it been Chloe, I would have been fine with it =P
(Apologies to Chloe fans)

Re: How the 'Caprica' reviews will work going forward

I think in your review for the BSG final episode you mentioned in the comments you were starting Lost. I'm guessing you got up to speed in time for Season 6? And...despite this being a post about you managing your free time, heh...what are your thoughts?
Not that I'm expecting complete reviews, but would love to read even just the one article on it. I think the show got badly maligned in its middle years, and rightfully so in some spots (when they didn't have an end date and kept drip-feeding the content for fear of running out), but I think it's coming together nicely at the end. May just top Six Feet Under as my number 1 show...depending on the finale...

Re: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Jammer, I've been coming to your site for many years (in fact my IE Favourite still says 'ST Hypertext'!) but finding out you're watching Lost finally made me post a comment.
When people ask me what my favourite show of all time is, I tell them it's a temporary tie between Six Feet Under and Lost, pending the outcome of Season 6 =P
So many jokes circulate about Lost nowadays (the drawn out mysteries, the unanswered questions, the slow pacing) that sometimes I feel like the first season did the show a disservice...but then, I'm not sure if Lost would be as fantastic as it is if they didn't take the time to really set up and explore those characters before throwing them to the wolves.
And, people call me nuts, but I have this eerie feeling Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof know exactly where all this is going (bar the occassional dropped thread...I want to mention one but I'm not sure where you're up to, heh).
Hmm so many things to say, most of all just wanted to say I'm glad you're watching it, can't wait to read your perspective on it all.
P.S. Sorry, thread is completely derailed now =D