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Oct. 19th, 2016 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSkipped the debate again tonight. Got enough politics at work this week, thank you very much. Although the election has renewed my love and respect for Joss Whedon, who turns out to be a huge supporter of Hillary Clinton and a rather sane one. Almost interested in watching Buffy again. (Not Marvel Agents of Shield -- it's not really Whedon's baby, more his brother's and Jeff Loeb's. You can sort of tell, it's missing something. Gave up on the show after the first half of the season 3, I think it was S3. Got bored, to be honest. Also, I resent the fact that it may resulted in a weird retcon of my favorite comic series, The X-men. Either that or I've just burned out on superheroes.) Have felt an odd desire to re-watch Farscape -- but alas, no time.
Watched Frequency and The Big Bang Theory instead. Frequency, I'll only stay with if they manage to save her mother. If not, I'm gone. Because really where can it go? That's my problem with the series actually -- it feels like it has enough for maybe a six-episode miniseries but not an entire series. At least not without stretching it insanely out -- with a perpetual carrot dangling in front of the audience. Today's audience doesn't have the patience for that sort of thing.
I actually like Timeless better because it has more to explore and is less angsty. The heroine's life does a huge about face, but in an interesting way. She loses a sister and gains a fiancee. Also the villain is more interesting and may not necessarily be a villain.
While in Frequency, the villain is just another serial killer.
On the reading side of things? Still re-reading the Magic Series, whose metaphors strike me as rather apropos. And doing a lot of writing. Each night, I write a little more of my book -- when the internet doesn't distract me. I wrote faster before the internet.
Getting closer though to completing one of the two sci-fi novels. Or so I think. I might do the nanowrimore, if I can figure it out.
There's some interesting movies popping up, but no time to see them. Sort of miss the old movie-going partners I had a few years back. Although still would have no real time to see them, movies or movie-going partners.
Anybody watching or reading anything interesting? Anybody still reading this?? Am I talking to myself?
Watched Frequency and The Big Bang Theory instead. Frequency, I'll only stay with if they manage to save her mother. If not, I'm gone. Because really where can it go? That's my problem with the series actually -- it feels like it has enough for maybe a six-episode miniseries but not an entire series. At least not without stretching it insanely out -- with a perpetual carrot dangling in front of the audience. Today's audience doesn't have the patience for that sort of thing.
I actually like Timeless better because it has more to explore and is less angsty. The heroine's life does a huge about face, but in an interesting way. She loses a sister and gains a fiancee. Also the villain is more interesting and may not necessarily be a villain.
While in Frequency, the villain is just another serial killer.
On the reading side of things? Still re-reading the Magic Series, whose metaphors strike me as rather apropos. And doing a lot of writing. Each night, I write a little more of my book -- when the internet doesn't distract me. I wrote faster before the internet.
Getting closer though to completing one of the two sci-fi novels. Or so I think. I might do the nanowrimore, if I can figure it out.
There's some interesting movies popping up, but no time to see them. Sort of miss the old movie-going partners I had a few years back. Although still would have no real time to see them, movies or movie-going partners.
Anybody watching or reading anything interesting? Anybody still reading this?? Am I talking to myself?
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Date: 2016-10-22 02:12 pm (UTC)I talk to myself all the time. Why not, I'm a very good listener, you know?
Not reading anything currently except the daily newspaper, just way too busy trying to make ends meet financially. However, when I do get the time, first on the list will be to finish reading your novel. (~sighs~) Yes, someday, I will, I promise. (~sighs ~ again for emphasis).
I haven't checked out Timeless as the previews didn't really grab me, but if you like it, I might since our tastes seem to intersect fairly often. I am enjoying Frequency so far, I like the characters, which I think the actors are going a good job with. Like with Buffy, the basic absurdity of the concept is something you simply have to let go of, and the actors have done that, are taking the roles seriously. IMO, speaking as someone with a decent theoretical scientific background, all time travel stories are inherently absurd, so all that I really care about is the way the story unfolds, what it has to say that has nothing to do with the technical aspects.
For example, it may be illogical that the daughter is the only one that remembers all the different timelines, but if you think about it, for the sake of the story, she must do this, or there is no continuity.
The best time-travel related show in the last few decades, for me, was The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which, technically, was just as absurd. But the show was awesome, still one of my all-time favorites.
(Sorry-- pun not intended, but linguistically, sort of unavoidable).
I do agree that Frequency may be best as a single-season show. To take it into additional seasons would require a tangent be created in the basic concept, say, father and daughter would branch out into trying to rectify other past crimes / murders, ones not related to them directly. Which, though I haven't seen any episodes to date, is what I understand Timeless is about.
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Date: 2016-10-22 07:08 pm (UTC)Outlander...bugged me because it seems to dismiss the rules and do what it wants. (Well that and too much reliance on rape and sexual violence as a plot device.)
Quantum Leap -- because it was sort of a one-joke story and I felt like it wasn't ever going to be resolved or go anywhere. And turns out I was right.
Star Trek - actually handled the device in a similar manner to the Terminator Series, from a science perspective and character perspective -- looking at the direct consequences of Time Travel. As did Fringe -- which sees the creation of parallel time lines or world's resulting from it. I mean it has to have consistent consequences. And must move story forward.
I don't know what Frequency will do..
I do agree that Frequency may be best as a single-season show. To take it into additional seasons would require a tangent be created in the basic concept, say, father and daughter would branch out into trying to rectify other past crimes / murders, ones not related to them directly. Which, though I haven't seen any episodes to date, is what I understand Timeless is about.
* Not sure what they are doing with Frequency --I like the casting and lead actors quite a bit. Also the little touches regarding the differences between 1996 NYC and 2016 NYC, having lived in both, that's interesting to me.
But storywise...I'm not sure they can really go anywhere. Also, it is almost too convenient that her father is dead.
It's hard to root for her and the South African, because the actor they got for the South African isn't all that compelling.
But I am, anyhow. Because the lead is.
I'm finding it frustrating to watch at the moment, but can't let go of it either.
* Timeless....well, actually, no, it's not quite about what you think. In Timeless, the time-traveling terrorist is attempting to undo certain historical events in order to eradicate a secret organization called Rittenhouse. This organization was responsible for his wife and child's deaths and is horrific. So he's jumping back through time, in a time traveling device created by someone who worked for the organization in order to ensure Rittenhouse never exists -- even if that means killing people like Ulysses S. Grant, and changing the structure of time itself. It's unclear whether he's right or wrong about this. Our heros, Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus are following him through time to protect history and keep him from disrupting it. It's sort of like they are chasing a terrorist through a museum and if they touch anything it could unravel existence as we know it. The story follows the same time travel rules set up by Ray Bradbury in The Sound of Thunder, Connie Willis in her books, and The Butterfly Effect. Which are -- if you pull one thread, you could unravel others.
The focus is heavily on means vs. ends, or few over many. In the first episode, Lucy manages to stop the terrorist, but not before he saved the first group of people on the Hidenberg from dying -- as a result, her mother never marries her father, her sister isn't born...and wait she finds out her father isn't really her father, and oh, she suddenly has a fiancee.
Her whole life has changed in the blink of an eye, but she has no memories of the changes, because she was time traveling at the time. Different rules than Frequency, where the heroine does remember both time lines. Here, the heroes only remember the one they left behind and tried to preserve. Meanwhile the terrorist, Flynn, appears to have a journal that Lucy wrote, long after she wrote it. And Lucy hasn't written a journal yet. And Rufus has been ordered, also threatened, to spy on Lucy and Wyatt for Rittenhouse by his boss, the creator of the time machine.
See? Much more convoluted than Frequency is and more plotty.