QUOTES

Urquhart:" I do enjoy these little visits to the Palace; a glass of sherry, some verbal fencing, and a bracing dose of hatred and contempt."

Urquhart: "Far be it from me to lop off another million or so from a deserving Royal family on the specious pretext of babies starving in the street!"
(This is quite clever of Urquhart: he is using the King's regard for the poor and disenfranchised against him. He is telling the king that the Royal family subsists on money that could be, ostensibly, better used ––– though of course he doesn't say how that will be used. It can be pretty sure that it would not be to alleviate the suffering of the poor and the jobless and homeless and all the other "nuisances" that he no doubt sees these people as. But like everything else in his life, he has no qualms about using their plight in order to score points over his adversary.)

Urquhart: "I hear you've been having secret talks with the opposition and some of the less trustworthy memories of my own party. Is this true?"
The King: "I have a perfect right ––– I would consider it my duty –-– to inform myself of all shades of political opinion."
Urquhart: "Yes, but that right hardly extends to conspiring in Chelsea restaurants and trying to organise a bloodless coup against the elected government of the day, does it?"

Urquhart (to camera): "What I would prefer of course is that he would give up thinking altogether. Kings aren't supposed to think."

Princess:"What's going to happen, Mr Urquhart?"
Urquhart: "I'm afraid that by his actions his Majesty is going to injure himself."
Princess: "You mean you're going to injure him. Do you really want to destroy the monarchy?"
Urquhart: "No Ma'am I do not wish to destroy the monarchy. You have nothing to fear from me, nor does your son."
(Here, once again, Urquhart has been very clever and manipulative. He is telling the Princess (who is already harbouring wounded feelings for her ex-husband) that it is the man he is after, not the throne. He only wishes to ––– as he already intimated to us ––– take down the current occupant of the throne, not destroy the actual monarchy. He is telling the Princess that, should the king be defeated, then the next in line to the throne (her son, presumably) will have his total, unequivocal, and loyal support. As long as she supports him in his endeavours to unseat the current monarch, of course.)

Quilley: "Man's making a stand: got to respect that."
(Quilley may be a drunk, overentitled, aristocratic waster, who only hangs around the Princess in order to bask in her reflected glory, but he is, in this one sentence, voicing the opinion of a large section of the population. When they compare the cynical, heartless, capitalist attitude of the government towards their plight, and contrast that with the King's honest, if somewhat naive, view, it's not hard to see why so many people would be prepared to support the King in his endeavours, and rail against the government for not doing enough, or indeed anything, to help them.)

Sarah: "He's put it on the agenda though (the King) ––– compassion. He's really done it I'm afraid. Compassion is here to stay."
(The one thing Urquhart cannot combat, and will have no truck with: compassion. You could say he doesn't even know the meaning of the word. Well, you might very well think that: I couldn't possibly comment. ;))

Urquhart (to camera): "No, it is not easy; it is interesting but it is not easy. So many people gather in these rooms where lovers meet, so many ghosts, so many silent witnesses from my past life and her present one. Sometimes it seems that they suck up all the sweet, clean air in the room and I can't breathe. I wanted to make her my slave, and now I almost feel in danger of becoming hers."

The King: "This is not some petty personal blood feud, and I'm not a politician."
(It may not be for him, but to his opponent this is exactly what it is. The King, naive as he is, inexperienced as he is, really thinks that he can effect change if he gets the power of the people behind him. He does not like Urquhart, but he is not battling him personally. He is in fact (or he believes he is) battling the policies, ideologies and decisions of the government which have brought them to this pass, as he sees it. Were another man in power things might be different: perhaps even such a man might side with the King (although that is probably unlikely), but Urquhart sees this as a personal vendetta against him and his government, and he has taken a very personal dislike to a king who, as he sees it, is abusing his position, and making life for the Prime Minister much harder than it needs to be. In reality, Urquhart probably believes that the King is not fit to sit on the throne: somewhere deep, deep down in that dark, unfathomable, cold heart there is perhaps a shred of decency, a small voice calling to him from the darkness, saying "England cannot be ruled by such a man". Urquhart intends to make sure that this is indeed the case. For him, the feud between the King and himself could not be more personal.)

Urquhart: "No rest for the wicked."
(Never was a truer word spoken, nor a phrase used more appropriately).

Urquhart: "Prime Minister's Question Time: very frightening. Like being mugged by a guinea pig."

Urquhart: "If any of this dirt sticks to Stamper, I'll drop him like a hot brick. In some ways, it could be a very good thing: the way the tide is running against us, we could do with a scapegoat."
Sarah: "I thought he was your oldest friend?"
Urquhart: "He is."
(As if there was any doubt in our minds at this stage, it's quite clear that Urquhart has no friends, and that those who think they are his friends, those who count themselves among the chosen few, are little more than pawns to be sacrificed as he sees fit. If Urquhart can save his own neck by, literally, metaphorically or politically stabbing his very best friend in the back, pushing him over the edge, letting him fall to his death, he will do it. And he would have absolutely no hesitation in doing so; he would consider it the expedient thing to do. There is no room for emotion in the heart of the Prime Minister.)

Urquhart (to camera): "But they all, all of them, betray us eventually. They love us, but not quite enough. They trust us, but not quite enough. And we trust them to be entirely human, meaning less than completely trustworthy. Which means that we can never quite entirely sleep. As the cat's eyelids flicker, some part of us must stay awake, always: ready, as the coiled spring is ready."

Urquhart: "You might think that some of those who made accusations were not perhaps in the ideal position to throw stones, living as they do in glass houses… Or Should I say, glass palaces. You might very well think that: it would not be proper for me to comment."

Urquhart: "Why are you doing this? What could possibly be in it for you?"
The King: "You really don't understand at all do you?"
(Here we see again evidence of the fundamental dichotomy between the King and the Prime Minister. Urquhart does nothing unless he can gain by it. Whether this is financial gain, political gain, or indeed personal gain, there must be some return for him before he will take any position, before he will move. The King, on the other hand, is not looking for personal wealth, reward, even recognition: he is the king after all, and has no need of celebrity, and certainly no need for riches. He genuinely believes that this is the right thing to do, and he does it because it is the right thing to do. The concept is alien to Urquhart. Why would anyone go up against the government when there is nothing to be gained, as far as he can see?. It just doesn't make sense: not to him. And here we see why these two men will never see eye to eye; though they, to a degree, "fight on the same side", they are living in worlds apart.)

THE REAL URQUHART

We see here an interesting parallel between the divorced Princess and Mattie Storin from the first series. Very much unsure if she can, the Princess asks Urquhart "Can I trust you?" He smiles, that shark smile, that crocodile smile, the smile of a predator sensing he is closing in on his prey, and tells her "You know you can". It's almost exactly the same question, and the same answer, he gave to Mattie ––– just before he threw her off the roof at the end of the first series.

POWER BEHIND THE THRONE

It would seem that even the Machiavellian wife of Urquhart needs to take a little time away from her own schemes, keeping Francis on the right road (as she sees it), and of directing his career. She tells her husband she will go to the country retreat, and will take Corder with her. Urquhart mentions that Corder is "good value for money": Elizabeth smiles that secret smile and says that she thinks so too. It's pretty obvious what is going on here: although Elizabeth is fiercely loyal to her husband, it's probably fairly likely that they don't sleep together, or if they do it's not very much. Whether Urquhart is aware or not of her dalliances with one of his underlings is not known, but considering his own extramarital (and approved by his wife) affairs, I hardly think that he would have too much to say on the subject. Pot calling the kettle black?

The betrayer betrayed

As he falls farther and farther from Francis's good graces, it seems quite likely now that Tim Stamper realises there is really no room for him at the table any more. His place of honour has been taken by the younger and obviously prettier Sarah Harding, with whom Francis seems to have what Stamper would probably assume to be an unhealthy fascination. Truth to tell, he's probably seeing Mattie Storin all over again, and we all know how that ended. But as he is squeezed further out of the circle, pushed out of the loop, Stamper is given a rope to hold onto: a rope not only to cling to to drag himself back to the metaphorical shore (let's say back into political life, or at least, active political life), but also quite possibly to use to hang Francis with. He has been told, or it has been intimated at any rate, that should Urquhart go down ––– as everyone expects he will have to ––– that Stamper could very well be next in line to lead the country, and he has friends he did not know that he had. With this sort of power base, it is possible that Stamper can be a force in politics, even without the patronage of Urquhart. So what now is there to stop him from betraying his old master? After all, we're likening him to the faithful dog getting kicked by his master: how long before that dog is no longer prepared to take the kicking, turns around and bites the hand that fed it?

There's plenty of betrayal to go around; Urquhart set Bullerby the task of recording Princess Charlotte's memoirs as a way of safeguarding his own position, a weapon against the king, should he need it. He told Bullerby the story that they would not be published until after the Princess's own death. It is certainly not clear whether Bullerby believed this to be the case, whether or not he expected that Urquhart would go back on his word, as he has done in so much of his career and his life. What is clear is that, despite himself, he has grown attached to the Princess and finds Urquhart's betrayal of her ––– with himself used as the instrument of that betrayal –-– to be especially bitter and hurtful. Bullerby knows he has been used, knows the Princess has been used as well, and it is unlikely that he will forgive or forget this very personal betrayal.

And is Sarah also betraying her husband? When she first took the job from Urquhart, she made it clear ––– as did he ––– that no sexual involvement was envisaged. Now, by mutual assent, (though really through the manipulation of her by Urquhart) she has fallen into a romantic/sexual relationship with him ––– she believes that she may even be in love with him, and tells him so. How he feels about this we do not know: after all, the last woman who fell in love with him literally fell out of his good graces, and onto the roof of a parked van several stories below. Urquhart does not have time for love: he believes it to be an impediment to his plans, an unnecessary distraction, something to be avoided at all costs. He also knows the power it can have over the human heart, and the human brain. It can most definitely get in the way when you're plotting dastardly schemes and trying to destroy your enemies, which is why he is also most surprised ––– and it would seem mildly annoyed ––– to find that the tables have in a way been turned against him; he finds himself as attracted to Sarah as she is to him, and the whole power dynamic has been shifted. Urquhart always prefers to have his hand firmly on the reins: he is not used to being the one being directed, as he feels he is at this point.

So it seems Sarah is prepared to give up her marriage for this man. Is she really in love? Can she truly believe that anyone could ever really be in love with Urquhart? And if she is just fooling herself does she realise that her entire marriage is being sacrificed for what very well may be a fantasy, a lie, or even a misunderstanding? She may be a hard-nosed political analyst but in matters of love it would appear that Sarah Harding is driven by the same urges, desires and needs that characterise virtually every human on this planet.

I couldn't possibly comment...
Again Urquhart trots out his familiar "plausable denial" phrase when asked during Prime Minister's Question Time if the royals have any right to be telling people what they should do, as they live in such luxury?

A Boy in a man's world?

Is the king growing up? Up to now, although his arguments with Urquhart have been heated, and quite bitter, there has been ––– mostly through what we would assume to be king's naivete ––– some sort of forlorn belief that he can somehow get through to the man, that he can make Urquhart see the world through his eyes, and that somehow, suddenly, out of the blue there will be a revelation, and the two will work together as one. Of course it will never happen, but that has not stopped the king up to now. Now however, it would appear that the king has taken something of a harder line with his ––– he detests the word, but there really is no other ––– enemy. Urquhart maintains a stiff, formal, almost mechanical attitude of respect to the monarch, but his actions are belied by his words. We see this most clearly when, as he prepares to leave the king after having failed to blackmail him into changing his mind, he speaks to him an equal. He does not use the words “Your Majesty”, he does not say Sir; he in fact affords no real respect to the king: he speaks to him as he would speak to any man in the street, and more, he speaks of him with the unbridled, barely restrained rage and fury that he would level against those who cross him.

The king, for his part, seems to realise that being a gentleman and doing things the right way will not actually get him anywhere. It is, in the truest sense of the phrase, time to take off the kid gloves. We see the king begin to realise this, when he refuses to allow Urquhart to review (that is to say, edit and censor) the text of his television programme, due to go out the next day. He is tired of Urquhart interfering with him, trying to muzzle him, trying to make him say the things he wants him to say. He has come to realise that Urquhart will not bend, that if he is to get his message across it must be directly to the people and not through the offices of the Prime Minister.

But he is torn too: he begins to see that Chloe is using him to further her own minorities agenda. When he complains "I'm not a political animal" she is quick to contradict him, telling him that he should go further when the king wants to step back, that people need to hear from him, that he is their hero, their champion. All of which no doubt plays to the King's ego, but he is no fool: he sees now he is being used as a mouthpiece for Chloe's own views, and as a way to get things that she wants from the government: effecting change through the Palace, possibly whether the Palace wants it or not. It's also quite clear that she is in love with the king at this stage, but whether he realises that is not clear. If, or when, he does, then their working relationship is going to get even harder, as he will have to wonder is he doing things that she asks him to do ––– or advises him to do –-– because they are the right thing to do, because he believes that they need to be done, or simply because she asks him?

There's an old saying: when the going gets tough the tough get going. Never has this been truer than of Urquhart. However when the going gets tough he generally gets murderous! Now that things are beginning to turn against him, in many ways, heads are almost literally going to roll. Blood will flow in the streets, knives will stab in the dark, and those who are in his way will fall as Urquhart bends his will to the task of removing any obstacles or impediments to his absolute rule. Yes, it's time to check on

The Urquhart body count

Lethal
John Krajewski: The journalist was a loose end and Urquhart does not like loose ends. There was only ever going to be one outcome of that situation. Although, with all that is on his mind at the moment you have to wonder had Krajewski not met with Sarah Harding, would it just perhaps have been possible he may just have been let fade away into obscurity, ranting his hard to believe conspiracy theories, dismissed as just another nutcase? But once he had passed on what he knew ––– or suspected he knew ––– to Sarah, he was back on the government's radar and there was only one way to deal with him. And so, in a way, we come full circle: the only other person really to know Mattie Storin, and to suspect her death as being other than accidental, has now joined her in the afterlife.

Nonlethal
Princess Charlotte: She would have to fall into this category: her life has been ruined, ostensibly by the man she trusted and was possibly falling in love with, and now, thanks to the revelations in her memoirs, published in the Clarion, her very life may be in danger. We cannot count her as a lethal victim of Urquhart, but we can count her as nonlethal. Her career, quite possibly her life may very well now be at an end.

Non-lethal Bodycount: 5
Lethal Bodycount: 3
Total Bodycount: 8

And isn't that…?

The television journalist we see during the programme is none other than Don Warrington, who came to fame as Philip, the upper-class student who partnered Richard Beckinsale and was something the bane of Rigsby's life in the television series "Rising Damp". We have also seen him play a small part in one episode of “Red Dwarf”, but in fairness "Rising Damp" is where he made his name, and is the series for which he will always be remembered.

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Oddly enough, it's more like Christmas now than it was in December. The sky is cold and blue, it's freezing cold and we're even getting some snow. But it is almost a month since Christmas Day, so time to get the last versions out of the way. There are four left that I know of, but of those, one, an animated version which has everyone as cartoon animals, can't be tracked down, which is a pity, as I would love to have seen Scrooge as a skunk, but what can you do? That leaves us with these three then.

Year: 2004
Medium: Colour
Starring: Kelsey Grammer, Jane Krakowski, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jason Alexander
Directed by: Arthur Allan Seidelman
Length: 98 mins

Brief comments: I found this so hard to track down I actually had to buy it. This is only the second time I've done this, but I have seen this version on telly before and was so impressed with it that I didn't want to pass over it. Plus it's Kelsey Grammer. It's also a full musical, based on a stage production in which Grammer also starred. It's interesting how Scrooge does not conduct his business at his office, chewing out Cratchit and the gentlemen collecting for the poor (three this time) at the Exchange, while his nephew accosts him on the way to his office. For once, a film set in the twenty-first century uses the bewildering arsenal of special effects at hand to create a true masterpiece of horror and fear. Wonderful soundtrack too. One of the best I've seen. Mind you, if I have to sit through one more rendition of Fezziwig's party I may just have to shoot myself in the head!

CHARACTERS
Scrooge: I once said Scrooge was the role Patrick Stewart was born to play. Not so. I was very disappointed, as I wrote already, with his take on the character; basically Picard plays Scrooge. Very limited. But Grammer! Ah now there's an actor! I've seen him play Frasier of course, the mayor in “Boss”, a criminally axed show that portrayed him as a real hardass, uncaring grasping politician, and as the cocky newscaster in “Back to you”. Here, he is none of those things (well, perhaps a little of Mayor Tom King) and puts in a powerhouse performance (and I don't say that often, but it's deserved), both with his acting and his singing. He is resistant to change but slowly crumbles, unlike other Scrooges who changed abruptly; he really gives the impression of a man going through a transformation, a cathartic epiphany. An almost perfect portrayal that easily gets him top marks. 10
Marley: Another excellent performance from George from “Seinfeld”, and a great song too. Wonderful effects, especially in the “Danse macabre” as the other poor spirits of misers cavort around him, wrapping him in their chains. Superb. Another 10.
Cratchit: The usual annoying Bob, content with his pathetic life. But a little less annoying. Have to admit he's a good singer too. Damn him. 8
Tiny Tim: Not too annoying, though he does sing. I notice that he walks without his crutch at one point. Still, not bad overall. 7
Others: The girl who is unnamed but whose father owes Scrooge is a sort of recurring character and she's played well. Say a 6 for her. Fred's okay but as usual doesn't figure enough in the story to be rated. I'd add a 4 for the trio of charitable gentlemen, who sing very well.
The Ghosts:
The Ghost of Christmas Past: Sexy as FUCK with superb legs, and she virtually does a pole dance around Scrooge's bed! Oh me heart! Great link with her being the lamplighter Scrooge refuses to help on Christmas Eve, and then her song is “The lights of long ago.” Got to be a 9
The Ghost of Christmas Present: Another character Scrooge briefly crossed paths with, a barker advertising a show. Could have done without the stage number though: pretty cringeworthy. There rest is ok, and there's Ignorance and Want, so that's good. 7
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: This time it's the old blind woman Scrooge originally passed. She said he'd meet her again. Interesting that it's the first time the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come has a face, also she's dressed in white not black. The Gravediggers' dance is great but a lot of the scenes are a little rushed and pushed together. Still, I'd give her a solid 7.

Faithful to the novel: Mostly, but there are some real liberties taken with the story, such as Scrooge's father being sent to jail for debt, he himself never being reunited with Fan, and the only depiction I have ever seen of his mother. It doesn't show Scrooge in school, but in a factory, working. Also, Scrooge's lover is called Emily, not Belle. Ah crap! JLH can sing as well! I really hate her now. The idea of Scrooge refusing Fezziwig the loan that would save his business is clever too, though added to the novel. We also see a lot more of Marely, including his death. Oh God! Not dancing sailors! Please! Um, Fred seems to have a son? In fairness I can only give this a 5.
Emotion level: High enough, yes, say 7
Puke level: Zero
Horror level: Zero
Soundtrack: Superb. Of course, given that this is based on a stage play and is a musical, you would expect that, but to be honest it kicks the 1970 version's musical arse. Fantastic songs, well woven into the story, and just top rate all round. The link between the song “A place called home” being sung first by Fan as she wishes for Scrooge's return home, then later by Emily is outstanding. No hesitation awarding this, too, the highest score. 10.

So that's a total of 97. With the stars added in that's another 20, but as The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is played by Geraldine Chaplin, daughter of the silent movie comedy icon, that's got to be worth at least another 5. The idea of using existing characters for the ghosts works far better here than it did in Ross Kemp's version, so I'm giving a 10 for that.
That's a Grand Total of 132! I think that is the very highest yet, and it certainly deserves it. Phenomenal version! Hard to imagine anything beating that!

Now, I was supposed to view, against my better judgement, “Barbie's Christmas Carol”, but the only workable version I could find --- other than those fuckers who tell you they have the full movie then direct you to their spam site --- Cunts --- was one where whoever filmed it decided for some reason to do so at half-speed, so that ev-er-y one spoke ve-ry slow-ly and made the whole thing e-ven more of a strug-gle than it would have been, and extemded the damn thing to over two hours! Nearly two and a half! Fuck it: an hour would have been tough to get through, never mind two! Plus I fast-forwarded a little and what I saw made me glad I had decided to abandon the idea. So Barbie was sent on her way, and that then leaves us with one final version to check out:

Year: 2009
Medium: Colour (Animated)
Starring: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Bob Hoskins, Colin Firth
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Length: 94 mins

Brief comments: Currently the last of the adaptations to be filmed, the 2009 version allowed Disney to employ all of the latest techniques in computer animation and CGI, allied to their almost limitless budget, and produce a film that far exceeded any of the previous ... oh no wait. It didn't. It's good, but it suffers from a few flaws. The animation is first class and the story is stuck to almost rigidly, but the writers can't resist throwing in some typical Disney wackiness and comic relief, though thankfully they stay away from cute animals and written-for-the-film songs. Not a bad version, to be fair, but far from the best.

CHARACTERS
Scrooge: Much as I dislike Jim Carrey, he is great in the role. The animated figure is perfect, a combination of nastiness and world-weariness, and Carrey voices him extremely well (he also voices other characters). For the animation I'd give an 8, for the voice an 8, so let's say an 8 then.
Marley: Here Disney really go to town on the special effects, and for the first time in a long time he's actually scary. Well played by Gary Oldman, who also voices Cratchit and his son. I'm glad to see they've realised, after all this time, that the scariest most horrible colour for a ghost is green. Ugh! A solid 8 for him.
Cratchit: Happy-go-lucky Bob annoys me as ever. He's okay but nothing special. 6
Tiny Tim: Not too annoying. Also voiced by Oldman. Say 5
Others: n/a
The Ghosts:
The Ghost of Christmas Past: Did not like this at all. Weird, flame-type creature whose head keeps separating from his body, and has an unnervingly thick Irish accent, which for some reason Carrey (who voices all the ghosts) thought was necessary. 4, and I'm being kind.
The Ghost of Christmas Present: Much better. The standard huge jolly figure, though now Carrey makes him a scouser! Laughs too much though, even laughing as he dies! The death scene is unexpeced and carried off very well, as are Want and Ignorance, the animation depicting them top drawer. Really, due to this I give him a 7
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: Terrible. A shadow, literally. The scenes are good but why does Carrey get credit for voicing him when the spirit never speaks a single word? Also, why they suddenly decided to have Scrooge (shrunk, for some reason, to tiny proportions) chased by a ghostly carriage (a metaphor for the sins of his life bearing down on him perhaps?) and take up most of the sequence is beyond me. No, I thought the whoel thing was very poor. 2

Faithful to the novel: Almost slavishly so, almost word-for-word. Have to give it top marks for that. 10
Emotion level: Some, but it hadn't me blubbering. 7
Puke level: Zero
Horror level: Actually, due to the great animation of Marley and the depiction of Want and Ignorance in the Ghost of Christmas Present sequence, a pretty high 6
Soundtrack: Meh, standard Disney but you have to give them credit for not taking the path of writing songs for the movie. So, let's see, 5 sound OK?

Our total then is 68. Add the stars and that's another 20, and the animation deserves credit too, so let's say 10 for that. That's a
Grand Total then of 98. Not bad.

But not anywhere near enough tobeat off Kelsey Grammer's version, which storms right into the second round.

Now we have our finalists, and tomorrow I'll start whittling them down, so that by hopefully the end of the week we'll have our answer to which is the greatest version of “A Christmas Carol”. Stand by: it's gonna get bloody! I mean jolly! No, I mean bloody...

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So now we have seven finalists, time to start cutting them down. Although each of these movies arrived here by virtue of achieving a higher score than the other two it was paired with, and some of those scores were impressively high, all that's in the past now and those high scores count for nothing. Everyone starts with a totally blank state, with no reference back to previous high scores, or scores, indeed, that just allowed them to scrape through. Here it's all about a new day, and we begin really testing the movies to see how they fare against each other: the best of the best, as it were. These, then, are the finalists:
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1935 version starring Seymour Hicks. Black and white. First version with sound. Scored a total of 64 first time out.
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"Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol". Animated colour version, first animated version, 1962. Scored 70 in the first round.
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“Scrooge”, 1970 musical version starring Albert Finney. First live-action musical. Scored 91 originally.
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1984 version starring George C. Scott. Scored a total of 95.
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"The Muppet Christmas Carol". Hilarious but strangely accurate version of the story from 1992. Scored 102, highest score to that point. But then came
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“Scrooged”, Bill Murray's comedy 1988 masterpiece. This cleared the boards, hitting a total score of 121, and setting a new record. Finally,
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Kelsey Grammer's musical masterpiece swept all before it, and booked its place as the last finalist with a total score of 132.

There can be seen a clear progression here. Good as some of the original versions were, the lack of effects, music and in the beginning somewhat simplistic or at least literal interpretations led to the original scores being quite low, if the highest in that particular class, while as technology progressed, bigger names came on board and the idea of twisting or retelling the story slightly --- or in some cases, totally --- became popular, the scores increased exponentially. Which may be why Grammer's 2004 version has the highest score of all.

Anyway, time for these titans of the Scrooge Showdown to face each other. Not surprisingly, we'll start off with characterisation, so who is the best Scrooge? Rather than awarding marks out of 10 this time, we'll issue each film's character with a mark from 1 to 7, as there are seven versions, but these will work backwards, as in, the best Scrooge gets number 1, the worst (of these) 7. The same then will be done with the other major characters.

Rather than draw this out longer than necessary, and as I've already made my comments about each character and facet in the individual entries on each film, I'm just going to score them here.
Scrooge: 1935 (3 ), 1962 (5 ), 1970 (2 ), 1984 (7 ), 1988 (6 )1992 (4 ), 2004 (1 )
Marley: 1935 (7 ), 1962 (5 ), 1970 (1 ), 1984 (3 ), 1988 (6 )1992 (6 ), 2004 (2 )
Bob Cratchit: 1935 (7 ), 1962 (6 ), 1970 (3 ), 1984 ( 1), 1988 (5 )1992 (2 ), 2004 (4 )
Tiny Tim: 1935 ( 6), 1962 (3 ), 1970 (5 ), 1984 (7), 1988 (4 )1992 (1 ), 2004 (2 )
Others (if any): 1935 ( ), 1962 ( ), 1970 ( 5), 1984 (4 ), 1988 (2 )1992 (1 ), 2004 (3 )
The Ghost of Christmas Past: 1935 ( ), 1962 ( 3), 1970 (5 ), 1984 (4 ), 1988 (2 )1992 (6 ), 2004 (1 )
The Ghost of Christmas Present: 1935 (7 ), 1962 (6 ), 1970 (4 ), 1984 (2 ), 1988 (1 )1992 (3 ), 2004 (5 )
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: 1935 ( ), 1962 (6 ), 1970 (4 ), 1984 (5 ), 1988 (2 )1992 (3 ), 2004 (1 )

So, on characters alone, we have the following finalists:
2004, with 6 top three showings out of eight categories, three of which are number ones.
1992, with four top three showings, two of which are number ones
and
1988, with four top three showings, one of which is a number one.

So those would be our finalists, were this only about characterisation. But though the story is famous for its characters, we judge the movies on more than that, and so on to the second category, which is, how true are all seven movies to the novel?

1935 (2 ), 1962 (5 ), 1970 (4 ), 1984 (3 ), 1988 (7 )1992 (1 ), 2004 (6 )

So now we see a change. Whereas some of the finalists excelled in depicting the characters, they often don't do so well when you look at the actual story and how true they stayed to it. Kelsey Grammer's 2004 version, kicking the crap out of the competition up to now, and three times at the very top, slides almost down to the bottom here and is not even considered, whereas Kermit and the boys, a strong contender with characterisation and one of the expected final three, keeps up the pressure here, coming in at number one. A late runner is the 1935 version, doing well but already out of the race due to its not making it into the characterisation category finals, whiel Albert Finney's 1970 version, a favourite in the scoring above, falls outside the top three.

Ah, but then the question needs to be asked: did any changes in the storyline benefit or detract from the movie? Well, let's see.

The one furthest down the ladder, “Scrooged”, is so because really, at its heart, the film is not a true depiction of the novel, so I can't really add anything to that and it must remain where it is, with a score of 7, the lowest possible.

Just above that, at 6, Grammer's 2004 version added and changed bits but to be honest they made good sense. Scrooge's father being sent to jail for unpaid debts gave his son a reason to ensure he would never end up like that, and the idea of him working rather than being at school at that age fits in too. His never being reunited with his sister works too and the idea of him being the only thing standing between his former boss and bankruptcy is a clever twist. In fact, the only thing that doesn't work is the fact that Fred appears to have a son. I can see no reason for this, but other than that everything they changed works.

The rest of them are pretty faithful to the novel, so if I were to move anyone it would be Grammer's and as the one above him has no real flaws in this area I can't do that in all good conscience. So basically everyone remains where they are. That means that in terms of this category our finalists are: 1992, 1935 and 1984.

Emotion Level: 1935 (6), 1962 (7 ), 1970 (5 ), 1984 (4), 1988 (3 )1992 (1 ), 2004 (2 )

Leaving us with finalists as 1992, 1988 and 2004

Puke Level: As none of the finalists had a Puke Level at all, other than maybe the 1935 one, I'm going to declare this a no-score draw and move on to

Horror Level: 1935 (1 ), 1962 ( ), 1970 (2 ), 1984 (3 ), 1988 ( )1992 ( ), 2004 ( )
Nothing much to choose here. Most versions had very little actual horror, but based on what I wrote I find that we have as finalists 1935, 1984 and 1970

Our final category, before we total up, is
Soundtrack: 1935 (7 ), 1962 (5 ), 1970 (2 ), 1984 (6 ), 1988 (6 )1992 (3 ), 2004 (1 )
Which then gives us 2004, 1992 and 1970.

So, of all those categories, who featured in the most, and how high were they in each? Let's check.
1935=2
1962=0
1970=2
1984=2
1988=5, one of which was a number 1
1992=7, 4 of which were number 1s
2004=8, 4 of which were number 1s

That clearly gives us three front runners in
1988, 1992 and 2004, but as we only need two, then 1988's “Scrooged” lags badly behind with five top three nominations but only one of them being a number one.

Our final top two then are
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The 1992 Muppet Christmas Carol
and
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Kelsey Grammer's 2004 musical.

So it's Muppets versus humans, musical versus musical, nineties versus two thousands, twentieth century versus twenty-first and cute and funny versus clever and powerful. Who will win, and be crowned the top version of a Christmas Carol ever committed to screen?
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Can you call it? Cos I sure can't!

I've seen Casablanca, Dead Poets Society, and a ton of war flicks, but the only time I've ever cried during a movie was (don't laugh) during the Muppet version, when Beaker gives Scrooge his scarf. I'm tearing up just thinking about it.

Hoping it wins.

And the winner of the most convoluted scoring system of the year goes to.......

You have seen my system for "Battle of the Classic Christs", I assume?

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After careful consideration, and not a little trepidation, I have decided that in order to do Star Trek Month (tm) properly it would be unfair, not to mention unwise, to leave one of the main series out. I may not like it, but it is part of the Star Trek universe and really, after a lot of soulsearching I have admitted to myself that it deserves to be included. Therefore I will after all be covering
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in its entireity. You can of course expect some caustic writeups on some of the worse episodes, and my trademark criticism of many of the aspects of the show, but I think you all know that I strive to be fair, and where the series does okay I will note that. Not every episode is terrible --- far from it --- but of what I watched originally (and I missed about half a season or more) the bad certainly outweighed the good. However on reviewing the series, that may change.

Will this affect the journal Batty and I were running, debating the series? I honestly don't know: he's given me no indication that he's in a position to return to it, and I of course am as ever super-busy, so if it does come back all I can say is we'll try to link it, but it may end up being that, when I run it here, the series will get discussed by us in this journal. Or not. I can't say.

Anyway, this won't just be for Star Trek Month (tm). Like any other series, I will be covering it outside of that too, but as I have so much to get through here I have no idea how long it will take or how regularly, or not, it will feature.

We will of course as always begin with the pilot episode, and as ever, anyone who wants to chime in is more than welcome.

So watch out, Janeway: I'm comin' for ya! ;)

Having just finished my first ever watch-through of Voyager, I can't wait to hear your thoughts on it. My in-a-nutshell opinion is that it's competent Star Trek with a handful ofclassic episodes, if you can push any sort of continuity out the door (BSG, this ain't). I will have more to say on a per-episode basis, and I might even rewatch a few with you.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Basically planks of wood trying to act, with exception of the Doctor (wasted, wasted!) and later Seven. A staggering disregard for the consequences of actions and a total ignorance of the Prime Directive when it suited Janeway (I mean, come on! An alliance with the fucking BORG? How did she ever think that was going to fly?)that really turned into pretty much a soap opera in space, and not a good one either.

But I concede it had a few good episodes. You just had to really dig down deep to find them. Will be interesting, that's for sure.

And welcome to my journal! Glad to have ya aboard! :)

Oh, but I absolutely draw the line at this!
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Never in a million years! Not even if you offered me ... how much? Um, well ... no no! Not even then! Absolutely, categorically not! I have to have some standards!

I really like that show. I didn't care for Deep Space Nine, and I thought Enterprise was a change in the right direction. I thought it had a good cast. I thought it had an interesting premise: it was to explore the back story of the already established (albeit fictitious) history of Start Trek tos and it's many spin-offs. It had so much potential, but I don't know if it fully reached it. The one draw back: it was a little too low key. I forgot most of what I saw. It wasn't memorable like Star Trek TOS, The Prisoner, or Doctor Who.

The Doctor is amazing, and Seven is also great. The best part about the latter seasons is that B&B essentially threw their hands up in the air and said "FINE! You only want Seven/Doctor/Janeway episodes? THEN THAT'S ALL YOU GET!" It's only sort of a shame, because Tuvok is my second favorite Vulcan (behind Spock) and he gets a handful of near-classics in the early going. Neelix is unforgivable though.

I'll admit I have somewhat of a nostalgic fondness for Enterprise, since I was a tween when it was airing and I watched it religiously - but it has a much lower success/fail ratio than even VOY, and the second season in particular is a complete disaster.

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2.9 “Croatoan”

Sam has another of his visions, in which he sees Dean advance on a young guy and shoot him, saying “It's in him”. What this means --- whether the guy is supposed to be possessed or not --- Sam doesn't know but on waking he rouses his brother and they head to the location of his dream, Rivergrove in Oregon. On arriving there they ask a man whom had been in Sam's vision, a tough military type called Mark, if he knows of anyone with, as Sam has seen, a scar on his forehead. After some initial suspicion and reluctance Mark says Duane Tanner has a similar scar, and directs them to his house. On a telegraph pole Sam notices the word “Croatoan” carved into it. He's interested: he remembers the story of Roanoke, the earliest colony to settle America. One night they all just vanished without trace or explanation, and that word was carved into a tree. This does not bode well.

They decide to ring the Roadhouse for help but can't get a signal. In fact, there seems to be no phone service at all. Concerned, they continue on towards Tanner's house where they are fobbed off by Duane's brother Jake and his father, but go back and look in the window to see the wife tied to a chair and the son cutting his arm, about to drop the blood on her and telling her it won't hurt. They break in, shoot the father but the son gets away, Sam wasting the chance to cut him down, and he disappears into the woods. The boys rescue the mother, take her to the hospital. There Sam meets more people from his vision, and stays with the doctor while Dean tries to make it to the next town to get help. On the way he runs into another dead body in a car, with a knife nearby, then a roadblock in which Jake is involved.

Back at the hospital the doctor examines the late Mr. Turner's blood and sees that he was fighting off some sort of unknown virus, but there is a weird residue in the blood that the doctor swears is sulphur. Sam nods to himself. Dean gets away from the men in the roadblock, barely, then runs into Mark on his way back into town. Mark tells him that he has had to shoot his neighbour, who came at him with an axe. They head back to the hospital, where Mrs Turner suddenly goes psycho, easily tossing Sam into a glass cabinet and yelling, grabbing a scalpel. Sam manages to knock her out with a fire extinguisher.

Sam tells Dean he has been checking their father's journal, and thinks he knows what is happening. The virus is of demonic origin: the more people who get infected with it the more get turned. It spreads by blood contact, and he thinks, as his father did, that Croatoan is the name of a demon of plague and pestilence. Seeing Mrs Turner is infected, the brothers have no choice and Dean shoots her. Duane turns up, a cut in his leg. He says he was on a fishing trip but saw what was happening and ran. Dean and Sam, the doctor and nurse and Mark all worry that he might be infected, and Dean goes to shoot him, as in Sam's vision, but finds that since they can't be sure Duane is infected he can't do it. As they prepare bombs from the medical supplies, the nurse suddenly turns and attacks Sam, getting him infected too. Dean stares open-mouthed: his brother is now about to turn in a few hours. An even harder decision awaits him than the one he has just taken with Duane.

Defending his brother when Mark wants to shoot him, Dean tells the others to go with the explosives they have made, and take the weapons they have. He will remain behind with Sam. As they argue, Sam trying to get Dean to leave him, Dean refusing, the doctor comes back and tells them that everyone has mysteriously vanished. At a loss, but with Sam's blood --- and now, the samples from everyone else's who was tested --- clear, the boys realise they may have to chalk this one up as a mystery and move on. Meanwhile, down the road Duane asks Mark to stop: he has a call to make. Just like Meg in season one, he slits Mark's throat and reports back that “the experiment was a success. The Winchester boy immune, as we expected.” Then he nods grimly, his eyes turning that shade of black that denote a demon is in occupation:”Nothing left behind.”

On their way out of town, the boys discuss what Dean had been saying earlier, about being tired of the quest, wanting to give it up. He had it seems been prepared to die with Sam, if Sam were possessed. Now Sam asks him what he was talking about, and after some evasion Dean says that before he died, their father made him promise something; he told Dean something about Sam, but we're not told what. At least, not yet.

PCRs

Once again Dean uses the names of some of his rock heroes as covers. When he presents their ID as US Marshalls, he calls himself “Billy Gibbons” and Sam “Frank Beard”. Of ZZ Top, of course.

Dean remarks to Sam “A little too Stepford”. That references the movie “The Stepford Wives”, about a creepy suburb where the women have been replaced by robots.

Mark mentions one of his neighbours is, or was, Mr. Rogers. Dean smiles despite himself. Mr Rogers is the presenter of a well-known and loved children's show in the US. Apparently.

Dean says he feels like Chuck Heston in the Omega Man. That references a seventies sci-fi movie in which Charlton Heston wanders the Earth as the last man alive after an apocalypse.

Unsurprisingly, Dean also references the movie “Night of the living dead”, cult zombie horror movie.

Dean worries that Duane Turner might “Hulk out”, referring to the transformation of Dr Bruce Banner into the green-skinned Incredible Hulk from Marvel comics.

Sidewinder, a town forty miles away, is also in “The Shining”, and is also forty miles away from the hotel in that movie.

Dean also fantasises about getting to bed Lindsay Lohan, famous A-List celebrity, film star and enfant terrible for a while,

WISEGUY
When asked to get out of the car at the roadblock by one of the guys, Dean shakes his head. “You are a handsome devil” he admits, “but I don't swing that way, sorry.” (Whether the devil here is meant to be taken literally I don't know, but knowing Dean, probably.)


BROTHERS
Dean is completely shocked when Sam is infected. He literally doesn't know what to do, so he falls back on his old instincts, instincts honed during years on the road, and protects him. He knows that his brother will turn, that he may in fact have to kill him, but he'll be damned if he'll let someone else do it. Dean mentions here as they wait to see if Sam will turn that he is tired of being on the road, tired of the mission, tired of not being able to just kick back and have some fun. He wants to go to the Grand Canyon, or Hollywood. He wants to try to get laid, preferably with Lindsey Lohan. He seems somewhat broken, and it's pretty obvious that without his brother he will be unable to carry on the quest alone. If Sam dies --- if he has to kill him --- then it's almost certain that Dean will take his own life shortly afterwards.

Dean then reveals that he is carrying an extra burden, as if that of being alive only at the expense of his father's life isn't enough of a weight to have around your neck: he tells Sam that he made a promise to their dad, just before John died, but he can't or won't tell Sam what that was. But as it comes in almost answer to Sam's request that he be allowed to share some of Dean's burden, it would seem likely that John asked Dean to be the strong one, to carry everything and not allow Sam to labour under the same weight. An odd, perhaps cruel thing for a parent to ask of one of their children, but as ever, surely the Winchester patriarch has his reasons?

Dean berates Sam for letting Jake Turner get away, but he knows in his heart that his younger brother would find it hard, maybe impossible to shoot a young boy in the back, even if he is possessed. He can sympathise with this but were it him he believes he would have shot the kid. Nevertheless, when it comes time for him to shoot Duane, he can't do it. Then again, he is able to shoot Mrs Turner, perhaps because there is incontrovertible evidence that she is no longer human. Let's not forget though that someone possessed is still human inside, and if the demon can be exorcised they will or may return to normal, as we've seen a few times now, most notably with Meg. Why didn't they attempt this with Mrs Turner instead of just shooting her?

I suppose an exorcism takes a long time and a lot of effort, and of course you have to tie up the possessed person --- and I think you may need a Devil's Trap too? --- and they could hardly do that with everyone in that situation but still, makes you think. Sam tells Dean that he's far too eager to kill a man who could be innocent when he goes to shoot Duane, and although Dean baulks at the last, Sam accuses him of being “just like one of those creatures.” We've seen this is Dean before: his years on the road, the things he's seen, now coupled with his cheating of death and the loss of their father, all have pushed him towards a much darker place, a place where there is little room for pity, sympathy or doubt. A place where the world becomes black and white, us against them, no grey areas. A world like that inhabited by the hunter from “Bloodlust”. Is Dean becoming like him?

The ARC of the matter
This surely must be an important one. Although generally it plays like Zombies VS Demons or something, the ending is telling. First, we reference back to Meg (or rather, the demon possessing her at the time) making her “phone call” in season one, when she slit the throat of a truck driver, caught his blood in a bowl and used it to contact her demon master/father. This was shocking at the time because it came as so unexpected, and second time around, when Duane does it, it's doubly so. Duane has only been in the episode kind of peripherally, even given the fact that it's the vision of his being about to be shot by Dean that brings the boys to Rivergrove, and he seems to be an innocent who came close to getting shot. In reality, it appears that he is now possessed, so you have to wonder had Dean shot him would Duane have died? Would the demon have left his body, or would it have used its power to keep him alive until it had delivered its message?

That of course raises another possibility, that the vision was planted in Sam's head by the demon, or a demon, in order to draw him here so he could be subjected to the experiment, to see if he was immune to the virus. Either way, it comes as a shocker, especially since the episode seems to be winding down without giving us any answers. It's quite low-key for an episode of “Supernatural”.

But more than that, it shows signs that there is a definite plan here, a plan perhaps to turn ordinary people into demons through viral infection carried by demonic blood. It seems, too, that this may have been what happened to the colony in Roanoake in the sixteenth century, though where those people, and the inhabitants of Rivergrove, have gone now is another mystery. This seems to have been a trial, a test, and yet if they already did this in the 1500s why the need to repeat the experiment? Maybe it didn't work properly the last time. Or maybe, as I've speculated, this time it was carried out for the express purpose of confirming Sam's immunity, though you would also ask why this is important?And where did the word Croatoan come from? Who scratched it into the post? The demon who bears that name? Someone who recognised it for what it was? Or does the word refer to something else, a sign that the experiment is over? Or in play?

Either way, it would seem that this is another sign that the demon, or demons, is or are gathering its or their forces for the big conflict to come. If humans can be infected and possessed this easily, it doesn't bode well for Sam and Dean's attempts to defeat the demon and its allies.

2.10 “Hunted”

A man talks to his psychiatrist, his name is Scott. He tells the doctor that he can electrocute things by just touching them. He tells the doctor that “the yellow-eyed man” wants him to do terrible things, but Scott does not want to. The demon tells Scott he has great plans for him, he says. On the way home Scott is murdered by a man with a knife. Sam and Dean talk under the trees at Rivergrove, their conversation picking up where it ended last episode. Dean tells Sam that their father told him to look out for his younger brother, but more: he told him to save him. And if he could not save him, he may have to kill him.

Naturally this comes as a shock to Sam, who asks what is it that Dean is supposed to save him from, but Dean does not know. He only knows that John made him promise that he would do as he was asked. He wants them to lay low until he can figure out what is going on. Why was Sam immune to the demon virus? Did his father think that his son was going to become a demon? Does Dean? Can he, on the evidence, despite how much it hurts him, afford not to? Sam agrees to stay out of sight, but unbeknowst to Dean he leaves the motel and goes to an old house, where he breaks in, trips a trigger and dies in an explosion...

... and Ava wakes up, screaming that she has had another vision. Sam has in fact gone to the Roadhouse, where he asks Ash to see if he can track other people like him, which after some time the computer genius does. There are only four, three of which Sam knows already, and one guy called Scott Carey. Slight problem though: as we know, Scott is dead, murdered a month ago. Sam decides to go anyway and talks to Scott's father, learns his son suffered from terrible headaches and had nightmares, spent most of his time in his bedroom. Checking that out, Sam finds a collage of pictures of yellow eyes. As he approaches a motel he senses he's being followed and turns, grabbing the girl who is shadowing him. She tells him he won't believe her but she's seen him die in her dreams, as she saw Scott Carey die. He of course does believe her, realising she is one of them, but then frowns as she does not fit the profile: her mother did not die in a housefire, in fact she is still alive.

Sam tells her a little about him but she is not interested in learning why she has visions: she has a wedding to plan. He manages to convince her to help him though and steals Scott Carey's files from the psychiatrist's office. They listen to the recording of the session, where Carey describes his abilities. Dean, having been told by Ellen where to find Sam, sees he is all right and does not approach yet. He does watch though, as Gordon makes a reappearance and shoots at Sam and Ava with a sniper rifle from the roof of the building opposite. Dean tackles him and knocks him down, but Gordon rallies and knocks Dean out. Sam and Ava have heard Scott saying that the demon has told him that there is a great war coming, and they are to be the soldiers.

Gordon ties Dean up and gets him to lure Sam into his trap. Word has obviously got around about Sam, and Gordon considers him a legitimate target now. He says he's heard from demons that there's a great war coming, that some humans are going to fight on Hell's side, and that Sam is one of them. He rigs up the door with tripwires to ensure that he gets Sam, while Dean can do nothing but watch in horror. But Sam, warned by Ava, knows what to expect and evades the traps, getting into a pitched fight with Gordon, whom he eventually subdues with a rifle butt to the head. He releases Dean, but Gordon comes after them. Dean glares; he wanted to finish him off. But Sam has insurance: he has called the cops, who arrive just as Gordon is firing at them like a madman. He's quickly arrested and taken away.

Dean calls Ellen at the Roadhouse, accusing her of selling Sam out but she swears it was not her or any of her people. Plenty of hunters, she points out, pass through and use the Roadhouse and it could have been any of them. Ellen and her crew do not give up their friends. Dean is again tired, all for ditching the quest but Sam convinces him to continue. He can see his heart is not in it though. He rings Ava, gets no answer, gets worried. A short trip to Peoria, Illinois and they find Ava's house, where her fiance is dead, soaked in blood, and there is sulphur residue on the windowsill. Ava is nowhere to be found.

MUSIC
Jefferson Airplane: “White rabbit”

Carey Bell: “Lonesome stranger”

Muse: “Supermassive black hole”

Tim P and Stephen R Philips: “Swamp thing”
No YouTube video available

PCRs
Sam asks Dean does he think he's going to go Darkside? (The Dark Side is the evil part of the Force in “Star Wars”; going Darkside is now a generally accepted term for choosing the path of evil)

Sam says “I watch a lot of TJ Hooker”. (A cop show starring the one and only William Shatner, gut suitably corsetted in!)

Dean uses the phrase “funky town”, which is a codeword for the guys when one of them is in trouble. (“Funkytown” was a disco hit in 1980 for Lipps Inc.)

BROTHERS
If anything ever tested the resolve of the two siblings, this is certainly up among the hardest of them to date. Sam is being hunted by Gordon, the psycho hunter from “Bloodlust”, and tries to convince Dean that his brother has to be put down for the greater good. He tells Dean that Sam will, at some point, become evil, and he must be dealt with now. Surely now the voice of his dead father is echoing in Dean's ears: save Sam, or if you can't save him, kill him. Did his father know what might possibly be waiting for his younger son? Was he entrusting Dean with the task of making sure the demon did not get his hands on Sam? Did he believe death was better than letting his boy be used by Hell's forces against his own kind?

Last episode, Dean protected Sam and was ready --- maybe --- to kill him if necessary, taking his own life we must assume shortly after. This time he has to protect him again, from someone he can't stop. He's tied up and can only watch and wait in terror as Sam's footsteps get closer, closer to the trap Gordon has set. When he sees his brother has survived, words can't describe Dean's relief, but he's tired of the chase, as he said in the previous episode, and he really seems to want to give up now. In a staggering reversal of roles, Dean, the experienced hunter who dragged his college-boy brother along, has become the one who no longer wants to hunt, who has become tired of and probably terrified by and sickened at the things he has seen, whereas Sam, who initially wanted nothing to do with the quest, is now the one trying to persuade Dean to stay the course with him.

Of course, Sam has technically more invested in this now than he had at the start. Originally, this was more a quest for vengeance, for his mother and for his fiancee, and later for his father, but now it has become much more. Now it is a voyage of discovery, dark and scary, but Sam needs to know what his role is to be, why he is having the visions and why others like him are doing likewise. Does the demon have plans for him, and can he resist them? Is he doomed to turn on his brother, on his race, and fight against them? Is there a way out? The only answer to that lies in continuing the mission, trying to find out all he can and making as many allies along the way as he can. For Sam, it's recently become very personal indeed, and although always a matter of survival, now it's the survival of his very soul that is at stake.

The ARC of the matter
Another human has been revealed who gets the same visions as Sam, but her life does not fit the pattern, which throws something of a spanner in the works. Although at the end it does appear that she's been taken by the demon, or a demon. There's more dire warnings of the great dark war to come, and the idea that humans, some humans, will fight in this war on the side of the demons, which seems hard to believe.

2.11 “Playthings”

Sam and Dean are trying to find out, without any success, what happened to Ava, but in the meantime get a gig to check out a hotel in Connecticut where some odd deaths have occurred. Arriving there they find the owner, Susan, is preparing to close the place at the end of the month and take her two daughters with her. It hasn't worked out sadly and the business is not there, so it's time to move on. The brothers notice that there is a tangible link between the two deaths: one was a lady handling the sale of the hotel while the other was a removal guy taking some unwanted stuff away, including some of the daughters' toys. So both, they reason, were involved in shutting the place down, and perhaps something living here does not want that to happen. They've noticed a “hoodoo jar” on the porch then they came in, powerful magic. But Susan says she doesn't even know where it came from, seems like it's been there forever. They discover more urns around the hotel though, and then a large collection of dolls as well as a scale replica of the hotel itself.

As if this isn't enough, they then learn there is an old woman --- Susan's mother, Grandma Rose --- living upstairs. She is reportedly frail and sick, and not taking visitors, so the boys will have to find another way of getting to see her. Sounds about right, huh? Creepy dolls, odd accidents, miniature hotel and strange old woman in the attic? Plus powerful hoodoo magic? To add to all this, a lawyer sent to finalise the sale and who confirms that rather than renovating the hotel as Susan thought they are actually going to demolish it, is found hanged in his room. Sam gets emotional and wonders if he will change into something evil (he is also very drunk) and gets Dean to promise to kill him if the time comes. After a lot of reluctance and avoidance Dean promises.

Dean talks to Sherwin, the old retainer, who tells him that the hotel was Rose's home, had been in the family for over a century. He shows him a photograph of Rose with her nanny, a Creole woman who wears a necklace with a quincunx design, the same as on the urns, a sigil of hoodoo magic. The boys decide that it's time to visit old Grandma Rose. They find instead of an old wiitch woman working spells as they had expected, a frail old lady who appears to have suffered a stroke and can't move or talk. Just then Susan enters and in a fury at their trespassing --- and surely now worry about who they really are --- throws them out of the hotel altogether.

As they prepare to leave we learn that Susan only has one daughter, Tyler, that the other, Maggie, is imaginary, so far as she knows. But we can see both girls and they look real. The one called Maggie seems quite petulant and just a little evil perhaps. It seems obvious that she has been the one causing the fatal accidents around here. Susan only narrowly avoids being run over by her own car when Sam rescues her, and they tell her what they suspect: that her mother, Rose, was working hoodoo to protect the hotel from an evil spirit, but then she had a stoke a month ago and could no longer work her magic, whereafter the spirit has had free rein in the place. Sam and Dean advise her to get her mother and her two daughters out of the hotel, and are surprised but then understand when Susan tells them in confusion that she has only one daughter: Maggie is imaginary. But the brothers saw two little girls. So now they know that Maggie is the malevolent spirit.

When they get back to the hotel Tyler is nowhere to be found. Dean asks a frantic Susan if her imaginary friend Maggie could be someone who lived in the hotel, maybe died there? Susan recalls her mother had a friend called Margaret, who drowned in the pool. They race there, to find Tyler drowning in the pool. Sam rescues her and later they find Rose dead in her wheelchair in the attic. We see later her (young again) and Maggie skipping and playing; she has given up her life in order to protect her daughter and granddaughter, and to provide the spirit of her friend a reason to let them go.

MUSIC
Michael Burkes: “Voodoo spell”


PCRs
There are so many references and allusions to “The Shining” that I'm not even going to bother. If you saw the movie you'll more than likely recognise them.

Dean says he will talk to “Boomin' Granny”. This is the title of a Beastie Boys track.

He also recommends as a hangover cure, “a big greasy pork sandwich served up in a dirty ashtray.” This is in reference to the movie “Weird science”, which features the same line.

Dean talks about meeting Fred and Daphne, from of course the cartoon Scooby Doo. Interesting in a way: the Scooby Gang travelled America solving spooky mysteries, which is almost what Sam and Dean do, though in an Impala rather than a van. Also, Buffy and her friends call themselves “The Scooby Gang” in that series, referencing the more-or-less same vocation. Yeah I know: I need to get out more. Or at all.

Dean's alias on his credit card, Jack Mahogoff, is apparently a crude reference to masturbation. Hmm.


The WTF??! Moment
Surely comes when we realise that although we can see two girls, Susan only has one daughter, and that the other, whom Tyler takes to be her imaginary friend, is in fact the spirit causing all the trouble.

I guess granny turning out to be the protector of the house, rather than working evil magic, is a candidate for this slot too.

BROTHERS
Something very important happens here. Sam, drunk admittedly but still aware of what he's saying, thinking back on what he has learned and what their father made Dean promise, asks his brother to honour that vow. If Dean sees Sam turn evil, start to change, become a pawn of the demon, he wants him to kill him. Dean avoids the question as long as he can, but eventually Sam becomes so intense that he has to agree. Curiously, we don't see him cross his fingers behind his back, which is something you would expect of the older Winchester, and he does not later make that his excuse when Sam asks again at the end of the episode.

Even amid all the death and horror it's nice to see that Dean and Sam can still rib each other good-naturedly. When they're (again) taken for a gay couple –- what? Have none of these people ever heard of brothers?? Gay is the first thing that comes to their minds? --- Sam tells Dean he is “kinda butch. Probably think you're overcompensating.” Dean wants to know why Susan thinks they “look the type”, though whether that's the type who go antiquing together or the type who are gay is not made clear: either way, Susan avoids the question.

Sam is obviously thinking hard about his destiny now. Having been hunted by Gordon, seen and heard other examples of “chosen ones” and now with Ava having disappeared, to say nothing of Dean's attempt to make a deal with the demon, his mind must be in a real muddle. Surely he contemplates killing himself, to spare his brother, and anyone who he might harm, seeing him change? He seems to have come more over to the idea that he is doomed to turn evil, whereas before he fought against it. In his heart of heart, Dean probably thinks the same. What will happen when both have to face the inevitable possibility?

The ARC of the matter
Nothing terribly important to the arc here really: self-contained story, mostly a sort of half-homage to “The Shining”, but Sam's doubts about himself and Dean's fears for his brother can only grow in the coming episodes and seasons. What will the outcome be? Would Sam really go up against his brother, fighting for the demons of Hell? And if it came to it, would Dean be able to honour his promise and kill Sam?

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Okay, well it’s now February. I had intended to have this all tied up and over and done with by January, but what with Star Trek Month and other things, I’ve let it slip. So there’s now no longer any hint of Christmas feeling, all the presents have been returned for the things we really wanted, the bottles are empty or put away for next year, perhaps to be used as gifts for other people, and the credit card bills have landed on the doormat. It’s a new year, and Christmas is a distant memory as the shops already try to sell us Easter Eggs. So let’s wrap this up before it gets embarrassing. What do you mean, that ship has sailed?
http://www.trollheart.com/scroogethfinal.png

So we’re left with two finalists, as both “The Muppet Christmas Carol” and Kelsey Grammer’s “Christmas Carol: The Musical” fought off all comers to land a place in the top two, and now we have to decide who will become the ultimate version of the story committed to the screen? As we have done up to now, we’ll begin with characterisation.

Scrooge
Muppets: Well, as fine an actor as Michael Caine is, and well enough though he plays the part I feel he was always, as any live actor will be, going to have to play second fiddle to the Muppets themselves. So while he gives us a great performance it’s often that our attention is elsewhere, as Kermit or Fozzy or even Gonzo divert it, and the whole idea of Scrooge being the central character is a little subverted here.

Grammer: On the other hand, Grammer’s performance, on a par certainly with Caine’s, has him in centre shot every scene almost, and if we’re not appreciating his acting we’re delighted by his singing. He drives the movie, as Scrooge should, and our attention is hardly ever taken away from him.

So on this evidence, Grammer gets this easily. 1-0 to Kelsey Grammer’s 2004 version

Marley
Muppets: Much as I like Stadtler and Waldorf, and their song is funny, I just can’t get my head around the blatant changing of the storyline to allow for two Marleys. It’s a step too far.

Grammer: And although I don't like Seinfeld, I must admit Jason Alexander plays his part really well, good effects and the danse macabre fits in perfectly with the song. A little overlong perhaps, but streets ahead of the two Marleys.

So again, it’s 2-0 to Grammer here.

Cratchit
Muppets: It’s Kermit, so how can you vote against him?

Grammer: Really, nothing special at all. Muppets take this round without even breaking a sweat (do Muppets sweat?)

2-1 to Grammer now

Tiny Tim
Muppets: It's Kermit’s nephew, Robin. he’s so cute!

Grammer: Again, nothing to write home about and annoying in a way Robin is not.

So another victory for the Muppets, levelling the score now at 2-2

Others
Muppets: We have Gonzo as Charles Dickens, who though I don’t like Gonzo I have to say plays the part really well and moves the story along. It’s also a clever device that removes any need for a narrative voiceover. Then there’s the inspired pairing of Beaker and Doctor Bunsen Burner. Hard to beat all that.

Grammer: The only other real character here is the girl whose father is in debt to Scrooge and whose house is about to be repossessed. She’s good, but doesn’t add enough to the story to beat the Muppets, who take this round, edging into the lead.

3-2 to the Muppets!

And now for the Ghosts.
Ghost of Christmas Past
Muppets: Nothing special. The voice was an annoying squeak and the idea he or she might have been an angel was a little confusing.

Grammer: Well I’m still having wet dreams about her, so she wins by a pair of very shapely legs!

Ghost of Christmas Present
Muppets: Friendly guy, big Muppet and quite serviceable if nothing terribly special.

Grammer: I’m afraid I didn’t like him, and his stage production just bugged the tits off me. So the Muppets win this one.

Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
Muppets: Always hard to rate this guy. Dickens wrote him as little other than a silent cloaked figure, so without interfering too much with the original there’s not a lot you can do. Their version was ok I guess.

Grammer: Interesting idea to have the Ghost in white instead of what has been remarkably the pattern, black. Also the idea that it’s female, and based on someone Scrooge has met, is clever. All of which swings this well into Grammer’s corner.

So the score is now 4-4, would you believe!

Okay then, they’re our characters. Time to move on to the other factors.

True to the novel?
Muppets: Very much so, with hardly any deviation, even given the little comedic asides with Gonzo and Rizzo.

Grammer: Adds in quite a lot to the original story, but as I said earlier rather than detracting from the story they actually make it more kind of fleshed out, and I think Dickens would have approved. Hard one this.

The Muppets satisfy the criterion of sticking to the story, but so many other versions have done so, that I think Grammer’s version was brave and visionary in adding on as it did, therefore I’m awarding this round to him.

5-4 to Grammer.

On the rest of the categories --- Emotion, Horror and Puke level --- everything is pretty much as you were, so that leaves us with
Soundtrack
Muppets: Some good songs, fairly twee but you’d expect that.
Grammer: A triumphant full score with some amazing songs, and really keeps the music going even for dialogue. Well, it is a musical from a stage play! The juxtapositioning of songs like “It is nothing to do with me” at the start to “It’s all to do with me” after his conversion, in a sort of 1970s Finney way is well executed, and I really have to give this to Grammer, making the score

6-4 to him.

So is that it? Or is there anything else we can look at? There’s no point in looking at stars, as both have a bona fide screen icon playing the main role, and though the Muppet Christmas Carol has no other stars per se, the Muppets are all stars themselves, so their presence kind of cancels out the host of other stars in Grammer’s version, leading to a draw there. There’s overall enjoyment I guess, but then I thoroughly enjoyed each, so that would be a draw too. I guess you could say the Muppet version is an original screenplay, whereas Grammer’s is based on a stage play, but then, he was in that too, so that still makes it pretty original in my book.

I honestly don’t see any other factors to be taken into consideration, and so I declare the winner of the Scrooge Showdown, the alltime best ever movie version of “A Christmas Carol” to be
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...sCarol2004.jpg
Thank you all for sticking with me, and may God bless us, every one! Or something.

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Okay well it was back at the end of November that I signposted this, so perhaps it’s time to get it off the ground. As I mentioned, I’ll be looking at each episode in the light of what’s good and bad about it, and how it compares to its sister show. As Family Guy was first on the air, it’s only fair I guess to begin with the first episode of season one of that show.

Urban loves my scoring system, so this is another that will probably drive him around the twist. Each episode will be broken up into certain sections, most notably “Good, Bad and Stupid”, but there are others. Each of these points will be given a score (“Bad” ones will get negative scores, the worse they are the higher the score) and at the end these will be totalled, compared to the other show and we’ll see who wins each time. Clear? Tough. Here we go.

FG0101: “Death has a shadow”

Basic plot: Peter Griffin loses his job and applies for welfare, but due to a cock-up his cheque for $150 is actually issued for $150,000. Peter spends his money lavishly until the error is discovered and he is prosecuted for welfare fraud.

Title thoughts
This is where I will examine if the title gives any clue as to what the episode is about, or has anything to do with it, which it frequently does not. I will then proceed to bitch and moan as I always do, and award a positive or negative score. At the end we will see what the overall consensus is on how the titles relate to the episodes.

“Death has a shadow”? Considering Death is introduced later in the show (and well done too I have to admit) I have no idea why this episode is titled as it is. The only possible connection is from the phrase “The only things we can be sure of are death and taxes”, but even that is a little loose as tax is not mentioned, just welfare fraud.
Score: -8

The Good, the Bad and the Stupid

The Good

The title sequence is one of the show’s strengths. It’s well written, energetic, features all the family (though no other characters) and has a great little tune backing it up. A real Broadway musical style, it kicks off each episode in fine form. What happens after the sequence ends is however often another matter.
Score: 10
(Note: as the title sequence does not change over the run of the series, this is the only time it will be awarded a score. Exception will be made when, as happens once or twice, they change the title sequence to add or take something away from it. I’ll mention this when it happens.)

The Hitler joke: class! A skinny Hitler is working out in a gym, and his efforts are laughed at and mocked by a big, muscular Jew, who has two sexy women hanging on to him. The lust for revenge in Hitler’s eyes … priceless!
Score: 10

The first words of Stewie, as he works on his mind-control device: “Damn you woman! You’ve impeded my work since the day I crawled out of your wretched womb!” Stewie would always be one of the shining stars of Family Guy, and rarely will I have anything bad to say about him.
Score: 10

The joke about the fathers all having a brain implant that tells them when their kids are messing with the thermostat in the house is mildly funny.
Score: 3

The clip with the devil on Peter’s shoulder is brilliant! The devil advises him to lie to Lois --- “Women aren’t people like us!” --- and Peter then looks to his other shoulder, nobody there. "Hey", he asks, "where's the other guy?" Next we see the angel stuck in traffic. “Come on !” he growls. “I’m late for work!”
Score: 10

Stewie’s inventive attempts to kill Lois always make me smile.
Score: 8

The followup clip to the angel/devil one is even better. The angel finally arrives, and looks to his own shoulders for advice, seeing only the devil there. “Hey”, he asks, “where’s the other guy?” And we see him caught in traffic. Yes it’s the same joke recycled but somehow it works, and works even better because of the repetition.
Score: 10

The moat/Black Knight sketch is decent too.
Score: 6

Peter and Brian in jail (why is Brian in jail?) with the couldn’t-hold-onto-the-soap gag is good.
Score: 5

Stewie’s “Life is like a box of chocolates/ But yours is more like a box of active grenades!” is worthy of its own score.
Score: 10

The first appearance of the Kool-Aid guy is funny, and surprisingly, though they overuse it throughout the series, it kind of never gets old.
Score: 10

The Bad
After promising his wife not to drink at the party, Peter drinks.He doesn’t offer an excuse or try to find a way around it, he just does it, as he will do whatever he wants every episode from now on. When he thinks about it and says he feels bad, having promised Lois that he wouldn’t drink, and Quagmire says not to feel bad, he just says “I never thought of it like that!” and goes on drinking. Huh? What a flimsy excuse to allow him to break his promise with absolutely no effort at all. And hardly funny.
Score: -10

After having Lois admit that, really, nothing bad happened, he grins “Apology accepted!” Give me strength!
Score: -10

Struggling to try to tell Lois about losing his job, Peter instead tells her that she is getting fat. Talk about the pot calling, you know …
Score: -8

Cutaways
Ah, the mainstay of the series, and later to become its bane as Seth relied more and more on increasingly unlikely and stupid recollections from the Griffin family, best parodied by South Park with the “Mohammed sketch”!

There are seven in this episode already.

1.
The first one is okay: Peter ribs the priest at mass about the potency of the wine, and says if this is Christ’s blood then the guy must be loaded 24/7. The second one, not so much. Peter takes one lick of a butter rum ice cream and falls over. Then there’s a third one --- yeah, three in a row! --- where he apparently has had an Irish coffee and then goes to see “Philadelphia”, and thinks it’s funny. Not sure what they’re saying there. It’s not like he’s drunk, just doesn’t seem to understand that the movie, despite starring Tom Hanks, is not a comedy. Drinking an Irish coffee would not do that to you.

Also, Seth gives us the clear impression here that Peter can’t hold his drink, but after this episode he’s pretty much a hopeless drunk, and much much later drinks his own father under the table in a pub in Ireland, so what were they getting at? Peter’s a drunk, plain and simple. I don’t feel these work on the basis of the idea they’re trying to get across.

Score of +5 for the first one, -5 for the second and -5 for the third, making a
total of -5

2.
This is a montage of the jobs Peter applies for. The first is doing some commercial where he can’t get the line right. 3 for that. Then there’s the one where he’s a sneeze guard (complete with uniform and gun), 8 for that, and finally something about the Von Trapp singers. Don’t get it. So -7 for that.
Total: 4

3.
Peter joins the student facing the Chinese tank in Tianamen Square. It’s funny in a way yes but also tasteless in the extreme.
Score: 3

4.
Peter not having gas till he was thirty. Poor.
Score: 1

5.
Clinton drunk and making a pathetic zinger to a journalist. Terrible.
Score: -3

6.
Something about “Diff’rent Stokes” -- don’t get it.
Score: -7

7.
And just to put the lid on it, Joannie and Chachi are attacked by a bear that comes through the wall. Sigh.
Score: -6

Overall, did the story work or make sense? Did it succeed or fail, and why?
Main plot
Generally speaking, I guess it did. The basic idea was to teach people you can’t just live on welfare when you’re not entitled to it and that if the bank makes a mistake you can’t spend money that isn’t yours. The ending was wrapped up quite nicely, with not, as expected, an acquittal but a sentencing, then Stewie changing the judge’s mind with his mind control device. Seth even gave a reason for this: though Stewie loathes both his parents he realises he is dependent upon them.

So yeah, overall decent enough and I’d give it a score of 7.
Main: 7
Subplot
Wasn’t really strong enough to stand on its own, as others would be, but entertaining and it did segue nicely into the main plot, so overall quite successful.
Sub: 6
Total: 13

The Annoyance Factor
How much did Peter get under my skin, in this the first episode? The more he annoys me, the higher and more negative the score goes. So in an episode where he did not annoy me at all (rare) he would get a score of 1. If he actually managed to impress me (even rarer) by being other than his usual self, that score could climb. If he annoyed me so much I wanted to kill him then it would be -10. And everything in between. Expect to see more minuses than pluses though.

I’d say here he does things that annoy me but not so much that I wanted to hurl things at the TV, so let’s say a relatively mid-range score.
Score: -5

Character usage
Self-explanatory. Of the main and supporting cast, who was used and were they used well?
Main
Peter: 10
Lois: 10
Stewie: 10*
Meg: 8 (what will become an unusually high score, given her almost being ignored in most episodes)
Chris: 2
Brian: 4
Total: 44

Supporting
Mr. Peabody: 6
Judge: 4
Kool-Aid Guy: 3
Quagmire: 1
Diane and Tom: 1
Total: 15

Grand Total: 59 (of a possible 110)

* (Later, I’ll also be scoring Stewie and Brian together; how do they work together and are they used to their fullest potential? Do they save the episode, is it driven by them and how would it look without them?)

Crazy Factor
This will link back to the main storyline. How off-the-wall is or are the ideas proposed in the episode? Is it likely (within the context of the show) or is it a real flight of fancy? Does it work or does it fall flat on its face?

Here, I’d say the idea is basic enough and works well enough. I’d give it a high enough rating.
Score: 7

Guest Factor
When a guest star is used, I’ll be asking were they used well, did they contribute to the episode or were they just there for the sake of being there?
None here, so score is zero.

Episode Grand Total: 122

And so on to American Dad.

AD0101: “Pilot”

Basic plot: Stan Smith, CIA agent, arranges to rig the election of his son Steve to the Class Presidency, but Steve goes mad with power and Stan has to talk him down. Roger, the alien, is put on a diet, but finds ways around his restrictions.

Title thoughts
It’s not titled, just “Pilot”. No score.

The Good, the Bad and the Stupid

The Good

The title sequence is decent, but would improve in the second season. There’s nothing terribly funny about it, though it does attempt to introduce the family and, to be fair, does a good job of pointing out where they stand in a matter of seconds: Steve, Stan’s teenage son, salutes, so he’s obviously proud of his dad. Hayley, the older daughter, rolls her eyes as he hugs her and slaps a peace symbol on his back. She’s obviously opposed to his work. Francine, his wife, removes the symbol as she hugs him, and Klaus, the, uh, fish in the bowl, tosses Stan his keys as he heads out the door. Roger doesn’t do anything but hey, he’s a grey alien. There is a shot at comedy in the newspaper Stan picks up every morning, and here it says “Democrat Party missing, feared dead.” Yeah, a bit on the nose, Seth. But overall not bad. Much better in season two though.
Score: 6

Roger’s first action is to blow off Stan’s suggestion that he try to contact his mothership so he can get back to his home planet. It’s obvious he’s taking to life on Earth, and is now addicted to television, having to spend all his time indoors. He also berates Francine for not having picked up some delicacy he asked her to at the supermarket. We can see already he is a selfish little bastard who cares about no-one but himself, but in the same way we love Bender for being the self-absorbed creature he is, we will come to love Roger for the way he is.
Score: 10

Klaus’s unhealthy obsession with Francine is mildly amusing.
Score: 4

Stan turning, hyped up, as the toast pops out of the toaster and slamming multiple bullets into it is great. Hayley: “Dad, it’s only toast!” Stan: “This time it was only toast, Hayley. This time…”
Score: 8

Roger having to go on a diet, with the rejoinder “We can’t all be like those anorexic aliens you see in the James Cameron movies!” is great.
Score: 8

Bush having a telephone conversation with God, where the Big Guy asks the president to “downplay our relationship in public” is also funny. Then he takes a call from Cheney and says “Yes Sir!”
Score: 6

Roger again. “Stan you killed your dog! And don’t ask me to bring him back with that ET finger thing, cos that’s a giant load of crap!”
Score: 8

Steve misinterpreting what Toshi says, usually the total opposite, as we can see from the Japanese translation onscreen. This happens frequently though, so in future I won't be counting it, unless it's very funny.
Score: 4

The chase scene, where Stan, supposed to be helping Steve win a girl’s heart by snatching her handbag and allowing Steve to catch and overpower him, loses himself somewhat in the moment.
Score: 8

“Spinning headlines back in vogue!”
Score: 5

Roger butting in on Steve’s reminiscences of his dad telling him women love power, to ask Stan to pick something up for him in the chemist.
Score: 5

Principal Lewis: “You can read! The system works!”
Score: 4

Stan: “Steve, I can promise you this, and this comes from years of experience: women are never right!”
Score: 8

The wire-tap on Nick from the INS’s wife. “Hey, better with your brother than some stranger, right?”
Score: 5

The Bad
The idea of bringing a stray dog, a fleabitten mutt, to Steve as his new pet is both offensive and not at all funny. It doesn’t work on any level, except to show how divorced Stan is from reality if he thinks this is what his son wants.
Score: -10

Roger’s attempts to write Hayley’s papers just falls pretty flat, and leads nowhere except to another bad taste joke with the corpse, this time, of the dog. And a pretty poor ending where in exchange for treats he will set Steve up with women.
Score: -10

The Stupid

Steve outlawing kissing in public, just ridiculous.
Score: -10

Francine’s confession of her affair with a teacher, over the bullhorn, not anywhere near as funny as it was supposed to be.
Score: -7

Stan having Lisa’s family deported. On what grounds? They seem all-American.
Score: -10

Cutaways
They don’t, thankfully, rely on them in this series as much as in Family Guy, but they’re still here. You wouldn’t really expect less from MacFarlane, now would you?

1.
An apartment in Iraq furnished by IKEA via the CIA. The joke, when the Iraqi man looks at his wife, of whom only her eyes are showing, and snorts “Oh for Allah’s sake! Put some clothes on!” and she covers her eyes, is pretty good.
Score: 8

Overall, did the story work or make sense? Did it succeed or fail, and why?
Main plot
Generally I guess it did. Could to a degree have been the plot of any high-school drama or comedy, without some obvious touches applied here.
Main: 5
Subplot
Virtually non-existent, and very poor for a character who will later make sure the subplot usually far outperforms the main one.
Sub: 3
Total: 8

The Annoyance Factor
Not too bad.
Score: -4

Character Usage
Main
Stan: 10
Francine: 7
Steve: 10
Hayley: 8
Roger: 10
Klaus: 3
Total: 48

Supporting
Principal Lewis: 2
Snot: 2
Toshi: 2
Barry: 2
Jeff: 2
Total: 10
Grand total: 58 (Of a possible 110)

Crazy Factor
Not too zany.
Score: 4

Guest Factor
Carmen Electra voices Lisa, so as a character she’s well used. However I’m pretty sure they mention Hilary Duff, but I don’t see her name in the cast list. If she is there, she does nothing more than scream as she runs off. Leaving her aside, I’d give this a decent score for Electra’s performance and usage.
Score: 7

Episode Grand Total: 123

So the pilot episodes of each programme score almost exactly the same. Interesting. On we go then, to episode two of each.

FG0102: “I never met the dead man”

Basic plot: When Peter accidentally knocks out the main television transmitter for Quahog, he finds that he has to find other ways to amuse himself, and soon goes off the idea of TV completely. He later meets William Shatner and they become friends. He blames Meg for hitting the transmitter, making her a pariah but later admits it was him, as he goes back to his first love, TV.

Title thoughts
I’ve struggled with this (and the repetition of death in two concurrent episodes) but I think it may refer to the killing of William Shatner near the end. If so, it’s still pretty tenuous, as Peter does meet Shatner, and spends a lot of time with him. Maybe he’s trying to distance himself from blame for the accident.
Score: -7

The Good, The Bad and the Stupid

The Good
Stewie’s phone call: “Put me through to the Pentagon! Don’t toy with me! I’ve already despatched Bert and have eight armed men stationed outside Big Bird’s nest!”
Score: 8

Stewie’s mission to destroy broccoli!
Score: 10

The race with the Amish guy at the lights, particularly the horse exploding.
Score: 8

Peter’s cack-handed advice to Meg about driving: “Ah, you forgot to flip him off, but otherwise good job!”
Score: 7

The CHiPs skit, where Ponch is seducing a woman driver while, behind his back, a truck rolls by with the words PURE, UNCUT COCAINE on its side and then two guys shoot at each other out of cars.
Score: 9

Tom Tucker and Diane Simmons bantering without realising that they are still on the air in Boston! “Well Tom, I just plain don’t like black people!”
Score: 6

The “Wonder Years” clip is … okay.
Score: 3

The “Scooby Doo” one is just as … okay.
Score: 3

The “Batdog” signal in the sky, necessitating Brian’s rapid departure from the picnic.
Score: 7

Diane’s spanking on the air!
Score: 10

Peter, on the way to the Bavarian Folk Festival: “You know those Germans! If you don’t join their party they come and get ya!”
Score: 10

The Hitleresque proprietor of “German bratwurst” moving over to the kiosk selling “Polish sausage”, knocking him out and scratching out “Polish” to replace it with “German”. And then casting avaricious glances at the next kiosk, “Czech wieners”...
Score: 10

Shatner’s death scene: “Beam me up God!” and the corset giving way.
Score: 8

The Bad
The whole idea of Peter blaming Meg for the accident which knocks out the transmitter is pretty much lifted from the Simpsons episode where Marge went to jail when Homer switched seats with her after he crashed the car. Poor.
Score: -10

Another rip-off from “The Simpsons”. Everyone decides they are better off without TV, just as the kids had to do without it when Krusty was Kancelled…
Score: -10

The Stupid
Peter expects people to believe Meg, a young girl, had her arm shot off (she still has both arms) in Vietnam, decades before she was even born! And the people believe him! Christ!
Score: -10 (million if I could, but ten will have to suffice)

Peter making his own TV channel? Moronic.
Score: -10

Why does Lois have to explain to Peter that “the lamp gives us light”? Is he really supposed to be that thick?
Score: -5

I just knew that would happen!
Where I record events that you could predict would occur in the episode. The higher the predictability, the higher the minus score.

As Meg, then Chris shoot a hoop, it’s pretty obvious as Peter takes his turn that his lack of physical fitness and weight is going to send him crashing through the garage door. And it does.
Score: -10

Cutaways
1.
Peter’s “trip to the south”, where he runs over Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote in the car with him tells him to just keep driving.
Score: 10

2.
Peter is expecting a boy and is told “It’s a girl!” Bah. This comes on the heels of his “I’ve had my share of disappointments too….”
Score: 2

3
Peter tries to sneak into an R-rated movie disguised as a bush? Unless I’m missing something here…
Score: -4

4.
Peter bursts into Meg’s classroom (in a towel) and berates her for leaving leg hair in the shower.
Score: -5

5.
His “Willy Wonka” one does not work. Not funny at all.
Score: -5

Overall, did the main story work or make sense? Did it succeed or fail, and why?
Main plot
There were a lot of things in the story that didn’t work, and the resolution was too pat. Peter just suddenly goes back to liking TV after he sees one ad? But then, given that he was addicted to it in the first place, maybe not so strange. Shatner’s role is unclear, though it does tie in with the Star Trek programme Peter has been watching prior to taking out the transmitter, and Shatner had been on his way to a talk about how TV keeps families together. Still, a little underused maybe?
Main: 7

Subplot
Well, once you have Stewie in the sub (or main) plot it’s pretty much guaranteed to be a success. His hatred of broccoli leads him to create a machine to control the weather, with the intention of making it too cold for the plant to survive. No flaws at all, and if anything saves the episode, it’s this, a situation that will occur again and again as Seth starts to run out of ideas.
Sub: 10
Grand total: 17

Character Usage
Main
Peter: 10
Lois: 6
Stewie: 10
Brian: 4
Chris: 1
Meg: 10
Total: 41

Supporting
Diane/Tom: 5
Total: 5
Grand total: 46 (of a possible 70)

The Annoyance Factor
Very high. Peter is an idiot. And a very bad father.
Score: -8

The crazy factor
Also high, though not as high as it could have been.
Score: 7

The Guest Factor
Shatner is featured but it is not him (not sure if they asked him and he refused, they couldn’t afford him at this early point in the show, or they just didn’t bother) so a big minus here. Have to say -10. Ponch, however, was voiced by Erik Estrada himself, so that gets a decent score of say 7. Overall then for Guests it’s
Score: -3

Episode Grand Total: 94


AD0102: “Threat levels”

Basic plot: After accidentally inhaling a toxic substance, Stan and all his family are quarantined in their home, with only twenty-four hours to live. When the scare turns out to be a false one, Francine, feeling her life is unfulfilled, takes up real estate and sells a house next door to them to the gay couple off the TV news.

Title thoughts
Yes, this is a good one. Bit basic, but it certainly fits.
Score: 8

The Good, The Bad and the Stupid

The Good

The fact that we assume, when Stan says about Greg and Terry that he doesn’t want “their kind” living next door, that he’s talking about them being gay, and it turns out he has a problem with them being reporters, is clever.
Score: 8

Stan thinking he hears “Your very manhood is at stake. Your very manhood is at stake.” in his mind but it turning out to be Dick from the CIA who is carpooling with him.
Score: 8

Stan aiming his sniper’s rifle at Francine, saying “What am I doing? This is the woman I love!” and then switching the regular gunsight for one shaped like a heart!
Score: 10

Donald Trump insisting on being paid royalties when Stan says “You’re fired!”
Score: 8

The homeless men realising one of them is dead and all fighting over his possessions.
Score: 6

“Oh come on! What’s more important? Your hopes and dreams or me making more than your mother?”
Score: 6

The Bad
Stan completely abusing his position at the CIA --- again --- this time to shut down the realty office with absolutely no evidence (cocaine donuts?)
Score: -10

The Stupid

Roger measuring for drapes and planning renovations after the family is dead. How does he think he’s going to pay for all of this? He has no title claim to the house (no rights at all, being an alien) and has never held down a job that wasn’t imaginary. Also, once Stan and his family are gone, who will protect him from the CIA?
Score: -10

Character usage
Main
Stan: 10
Francine: 10
Roger: 6
Hayley: 7
Steve: 7
Klaus: 5
Total: 45

Supporting
Greg and Terry: 5
Snot: 4
Toshi: 5
Barry: 3
CIA* : 4
Total: 21
Grand Total: 66 (Out of a possible 110)

(* As many of Stan’s contemporaries at the CIA are either nameless or used sort of interchangeably, other than Bullock, his boss, whenever he interacts with them --- unless one is clearly singled out, as does happen later on occasion --- I’ll treat any of his co-workers under the blanket “CIA” label,as here)

Did the storyline work or make sense? Did it succeed or fail, and why?
Main plot
Yeah, but again the comparisons with “The Simpsons” surface. As South Park remarked, Simpsons did it first. Marge spent time as a real estate agent, though Homer wasn’t as insecure about it as Stan is here.
Main: 5
Subplot
Sort of again non-existent really, and Roger is used pretty much only peripherally and as a source of annoyance.
Sub: 0
Total: 5


The Annoyance Factor
Very high. Stan’s (and his colleagues’) intolerance of homosexuals, their complete lack of understanding of it (“If there are two men who has the vagina? You gotta have a vagina!”) and also Stan’s condescending attitude towards Francine’s job (“Oh, she’ll soon get tired of playing with her new bone”), coupled with his feeling emasculated because she earns more than him is highly offensive.
Score: -9

A missed opportunity?
Not being scored, but just where I poke my nose in and mention things that could have happened in the episode but didn't.

As they wait out the final 24 hours of their lives, Stan and the family watch the first season of "24". As it ends, and the time runs out, I think it would have been good to have had the "24" clock ticking down to 23:59. After all, they used the clock in the house, so why not? Seemed like it was all set up for that gag, but they either missed it or decided against it. Boo.


The Guest Factor
No guests.

Episode Grand Total: 96

Again it's a close-run thing, however both shows score pretty low second time out.

FG0103: “Chitty Chitty death bang”

Basic plot: As his first birthday approaches, Stewie fears that the celebration is in fact an attempt by Lois to have him returned to her womb, and sets out to defeat her. Meg joins a suicide cult.

Title Thoughts
Already we’re looking at this and spreading out hands. What the fuck does “Chitty chitty death bang” mean, other than as a way of referencing the cult movie? It has nothing to do with the episode. What is the point?
Score: -10

The Good, The Bad and the Stupid

The Good
Sign: “You must be at least this high to ride”. Shows a hippy completely out of it.
Score: 10

Peter playing “Virtual Stuck Behind a Bus”.
Score: 8

Stewie’s misinterpretation of “the man in white”.
Score: 10

The “Dukes of Hazzard” voiceover
Score: 7

Peter’s somewhat creative description of what happened down at Cheesy Charlies’s…
Score: 10

Brian’s magazine: Doggy Style!
Score: 8

Peter doing his three little pigs routine. The UPS tagline just seals it.
Score: 10

Stewie encasing the airline guy in carbonite.
Score: 10

“Hey Lois look! The two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant and a big fat white guy who’s threatened by change!”
Score: 8

Peter trying to get the monkey off his back --- literally!
Score: 10

The Bad

Nothing really that I’d class as “Bad”, for once.

The Stupid

Brian chasing some sort of miniature covered wagon across the floor?
Score: -10

Cutaways
1.
Stewie’s birth, which shocks Peter, is terrible, but then the doctor says “Oh I don’t think we’re finished here” and takes out a map of Europe, marked with various “bomb here” notes.
Score: 6

2.
Lois remembers all the work she had to do for Meg’s first birthday party, and all the things she missed because of it. All this does is to highlight what a lazy, selfish jerk Peter was even back then, not offering to even help. Not remotely funny, and given how dismissive he became of his daughter, almost ironic in a not at all funny way.
Score: -10

3.
Peter taking part in “West Side Story”. Pathetic.
Score: -8

4.
Hanson’s bus breaks down outside the Griffin’s house and Peter mistakes them for the "Children of the Corn", shooting them all with his shotgun.
Score: 10

5.
Stewie’s memories of his “Star Wars”-esque attack on the egg inside Lois.
Score: 10

6.
Peter farting in the lift. Sigh.
Score: -9

7.
Jesus turning water into funk. Double sigh.
Score: -10

I just knew that would happen!
Um, no I didn’t. When Peter goes to see the circus parade and looks at one of the signs pointing the way, I, like probably everyone, thought he was just going to redirect the parade, but he picks up the sign and hits the bandleader over the head, taking over. It’s funny and unexpected, but unfortunately it again copies the Simpsons, when Homer wanted to get in to the Superbowl. Still, it’s a decent, unexpected twist.
Score: 8

Character usage
Main
Peter: 10
Lois: 10
Stewie: 10
Chris: 3
Meg: 8
Brian: 4
Total: 45

Supporting
None
Total: 0
Grand total: 45 (Of a possible 60)

Did the storyline work or make sense? Why?
Main plot
Yeah, the storyline was hilarious, very clever and the two plots dovetailed really nicely. One of the better early episodes. Little bad to say about it. Peter's attempts to pull together a party at the last moment are quite funny.
Main: 7
Subplot
What can you say? Inspired. Stewie thinks he's going to be stuffed back inside Lois and mistakes the cult leader Meg met for "the man in white" (well, he is wearing white!) and kills him. Superb.
Sub: 10
Total: 17

The Annoyance Factor
Not much really. Zero in fact.

The Guest Factor
There’s a mention of Waylon Jennings playing himself, but I can’t see it, unless he does the “Dukes of Hazzard” voiceover? Rachael MacFarlane, who would go on to voice Francine in American Dad, and is Seth’s sister, voices Jennifer, Meg’s suicide cult member friend.

While I feel Jennings was totally underused if the above is the case, Rachel voiced Jennifer well and was used well, so overall
Score: 7

Evolution/Devolution
At times Peter behaves almost like a proper father and husband, mostly though he’s an insensitive annoying jerk who does not deserve Lois. Here I’ll be scoring him on each episode as to how well or badly he does.

With his realisation of the importance of Stewie’s birthday being more for Lois than the baby, Peter finally gets it, and his screwup at Cheesie Charlie’s is superceded by his mini-epiphany. And he did get the circus to come to their house!
Score: 8

Good or bad ending?
A good resolution, with Stewie killing “the man in white” --- “It’s a boy!” but the actual last scene, where they weakly tie in with the cutaway to Jesus is quite pointless. Still, the ending has to be agreed to be good.
Score: 9

Episode Grand Total: 138

AD0103:”Stan knows best”

Basic plot: Tired of Stan’s many rules, Hayley moves out of the house and into Jeff’s van. She then gets a job as a stripper. Roger pretends to be a disabled sister of Steve so he can get some.

Title Thoughts
Decent enough, and captures the essence of Stan Smith perfectly.
Score: 10

The Good, The Bad and the Stupid

The Good
Stan tries to use a “trigger word” on Hayley --- it’s supposed to make her go kill Walter Mondale --- but it doesn’t work. A moment later we see Steve in the background, walking glassy-eyed with a rifle. Good joke, and it presages one of the Christmas specials, where Stan buys Steve his first gun. You probably read it in “Christmas on the Couch with Trollheart”. What do you mean, you didn’t?
Score: 10

Roger: “Fine! I’ll go back to the frigid attic! I’m supposed to bring pneumonia back to my home planet anyway!”
Score: 7

“Hey Stan! Did you hear? Sanders just killed his first dictator! Well, first he was a US ally, then a dictator!”
Score: 6

Sign: Mentally deficient young women --- formerly Crazy girls!
Score: 5

Customer to Hayley as a stripper: “Oh yeah! Who’s yer daddy?” Stan: “I am!”
Score: 4

Roger getting lost in his first real role as a teenage girl, something that will lead to his many disguises and personas. It all starts here!
Score: 10

Stripper fight!
Score: 8

The Bad
“Most girls your age have to go through chemo to get a wig this nice!” Not at all funny; quite insensitive and offensive, really.
Score: -10

Francine’s “this isn’t about Tina” rant. Too long and pointless.
Score: -5

Hayley’s wig falls off and the patrons are grossed out? After the kinds of things they've fantasised about? Probably.
Score: -8

The Stupid
Steve’s efforts to get a date are just sad and annoying. Doesn’t he realise that when a girl kicks you in the crotch it’s an indication she’s not interested? (Or is it?)
Score: -5

Cutaways
None

Character usage
Main
Stan: 10
Francine: 7
Steve: 7
Hayley: 9
Roger: 7
Klaus: 0
Total: 40

Supporting
CIA: 6
Jeff: 6
Snot: 4
Toshi: 4
Barry: 2
Total: 22
Grand Total: 62 (Of a possible 110)

Did the storyline work or make sense? Did it succeed or fail, and why?
Main plot
It did, and for once it was not a rip-off of “Simpsons”. The striking out of an independent young woman on her own comes to something of a screeching halt when she realises the alternative to living under her domineering father’s roof is to live in a van with her boyfriend, but she handles it well. At the end, things are sort of back to the way they were though, but Jeff is properly introduced here and Stan learns something about his daughter.
Main: 6
Subplot
As ever, any subplot with Roger is worth watching, and his initial intention to pose as Steve’s horribly disfigured sister takes on its own life as he gets lost in the role. As I said above, this kicks off the whole idea of Roger having various personas, and also provides a plot device to allow him to get out of the house, which is just as well because let’s face it, they could hardly keep coming up with stories with him in the house.
Sub: 9
Total: 15

Evolution/Devolution
Stan is the typical tyrannical father --- “While you live under my roof you’ll obey my rules” --- and goes to extreme lengths to impose his will here. Cutting off Hayley’s hair because he doesn’t like the colour she dyes it is only the start. He then has her captured by the CIA from a party, pulls a gun on her, laughs at her efforts to leave home and ends up in a fight with her fellow strippers when he orders her home. By the end, he has learned to loosen the leash a little, but he is still having her followed by the CIA when she goes out, so what has he learned really? Little I would say.
Score: -7

The Annoyance Factor
Because of his intransigence and strictness, he is annoying but not as much as in the previous episode.
Score: -6

The Guest Factor
Zooey Deschanel is good as Kammie, the girl Steve tries to impress by pretending Roger is his sister.
Score: 5

Episode Grand Total: 107

So there's a very marked difference here, as Family Guy clearly beats American Dad by a clear thirty points. Much of this is of course down to Stewie, as much of the higher scoring episodes of the other series will be thanks to Roger.

Apparently, the first season of each show is very short --- seven episodes each --- and so that brings us to the halfway point. Let's see how we're doing.

Total score for Family Guy: 354
Total score for American Dad: 326

So there's a decent enough lead for the original show, but we'll see how things stand at the end of the season. Apart from anything else, there are supporting characters yet to be introduced in each, which may swing the balance one way or the other.

http://www.trollheart.com/surpmov1.png
It's always nice to have a surprise at the movies. We all think we can predict how something is going to go, and nine times out of ten we're right, so whenever something unexpected happens --- be it good or bad --- we usually end up remembering that movie based on the unpredictability of the event that occurred.

Here I'll be running examples of the occasions when this happens. The first one I want to look at is from this movie

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71TDBGEC1NL.gif

Samuel L. Jackson is a corporate exec brought in by the financial backers of the facility where the "super sharks" are being kept and experimented on. During a dramatic speech about keeping together and facing the odds, Jackson's character is suddenly and unexpectedly eaten by one of the sharks and dragged away. It happens here:

What I particularly love about this moment is that a) you never expect a star of Jackson's calibre and movie net worth to meet such a bloody end, b) there is no, repeat no signposting of the event --- you don't see the shark slowly circle around him or anyone gazing fearfully to his side; it just happens in a flash, literally in midsentence and is over as quickly and c) the scene continues, to show another shark rip him in half, in case anyone had the idea he might somehow survive and make a reappearance.

When this character died, he was not coming back!
One of the many things that allows this movie to stand out from the plethora of shark movies that have proliferated ever since "Jaws" brought our attention to these hunters of the oceans.

http://www.trollheart.com/treknthann.png
http://www.meilleur-top.com/sites/me...numbers/14.png
days to go!

I'd just like to point out that your graphic already says all of what you just took a paragraph to say again, making one or the other redundant. I suppose you can take that as a compliment, as your graphic is informative enough that it does not require explanation. I know you like to Trollheart on at length when given half a chance, but I just thought that worth mentioning.

I've never watched Star Trek. Where should I start, and is it on Netflix?

Depends on what you want.
Original is a bit campy at times but you really need to see it to appreciate Trek. It's just called Star Trek or sometimes TOS (The Original Series) or Classic Trek.

The followup to that, the 80s version, "The Next Generation", is more serious with a much bigger budget, and with the series already established they knew they had a willing audience so there was no real fear of cancellation, as in the original.

Deep Space 9 came next. That's great if you're into political intrigue, religious themes and a huge overarching story that spans most of the series from season three onwards. It's also much darker and more adult-themed.

Voyager went back to being more or less lighthearted, with a soap-in-space idea. There's a female captain in that one.

Enterprise went backwards to even before TOS, but mostly it failed. Yer man from Quantum Leap is the captain in that.

Yeah, they're all on Netflix.

Personally I'd suggest starting at the start with TOS, though if you go straight to NextGen you won't be missing very much. TBH, you could start with any of them as they don't really crossover all that much, though the beginning of DS9 refers back to a serious plot strand in, and spoiler for if you haven't seen it, TNG. I watched them all as they aired, so I can't really say how you should approach it. Like I say, I guess it depends on what you want to get out of it. Also how much time you have. TOS=3 seasons. TNG/DS9/Voyager=7 seasons each. Enterprise=4 seasons. That's a lot of telly!

But worth it.

Just start with Next Generation. It's a more mature and better made show--the B-rate acting is still there--while still giving you pretty much the exact same experience as the original series. After that go back and watch TOS, though I actually think some of the movies were better than much of the series. But if you're starting to fade out by this point, drop everything and switch to Deep Space Nine. It doesn't have the feel of pure exploration that the first two series do, but for the most part it has the best characters, and a plot that actually goes somewhere.

Great advice, now he'll spend the next decade watching them all :laughing:

http://www.renegadebroadcasting.com/...il-268x300.jpg
Step right up ladies and gentlemen! You are about to witness that which no living human eyes should ever see, and discover truths too awful for the human brain to comprehend. You have, I trust, all signed the disclaimer waivers you were presented with at the door? Ah yes, good, good. And the price was only that of your immortal souls. Pfah! You have no need for that, right? Most of you don’t even believe it exists. Indeed. So really, you’ve paid nothing…

Ahem! Where was I? Oh yes! Then right this way please, and take your seats. The show is about to start. Do be advised the doors will be locked upon commencement of the film and there is no escape, and certainly no refunds. You have all come here of your own free will, and have signed affadavits to that effect. What happens next is entirely consensual and the dangers have already been pointed out to you. Please note we have one of the finest legal teams in the world on our books, so any attempts to sue us for, oh, I don’t know, mental anguish or trauma experienced during our presentation will be fought to the very best of our ability.

As a wise man once said, you pays your money and you takes your chances…

Now, quiet please. Extinguish all cigarettes and combustible materials, turn off all mobile phones and tablets and please do not attempt to record the film; nobody will want to see it anyway. The burly gentlemen stationed at each exit are there for your protection, and for no other reason. May we just please remind anyone of a weak disposition or who has a history of heart problems to reconsider remaining before the doors are sealed? No? Nobody. You’re all quite happy to remain where you are. Do remember later, I asked.

Then let the lights go down, the curtain raise and prepare once more, you brave and foolhardy souls to
http://www.trollheart.com/craptastic1.jpg

Back in the 1970s it was easy to spot a bad movie. Usually they were the ones with the likes of Doug McClure in them, scantily-clad young ladies running from monsters, or martians, or perhaps prehistoric creatures like dinosaurs. These days, things are a lot more subtle but you can still spot the dubious movies, often by their titles. I mean, “Strippers vs Werewolves” doesn’t exactly sound like anything that’s going to tax your brain too much, now does it?

But this one. Well, this one really has Oscar nominee written all over it. And yet, when I watched it for the first time I was shocked to find that --- yeah, right. This belongs on the cutting room floor with all the other unnecessary shots that were ripped out of it, leaving us with ninety minutes of preposterous garbage that goes by the glorious title of
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rth_poster.jpg

You can just sense the class reeking from it as you look at the poster, can’t you? Not even McClure would be seen dead in this, in fact nobody who is anyone is in it. All these actors (I use the phrase loosely, of course) are unknown to me .. wait a moment! Dominque Swain? She was in “Face/off” wasn’t she? And isn’t Jake Busey the son of that action-movie powerhouse madman Gary? What ever possessed them to get dragged into something like this? Could it be blackmail? Are there compromising photographs floating around somewhere, or held under lock and key by the, um, director of this, um, film?

Title: Nazis at the center of the Earth
Year: 2012
Writer: Paul Bales
Producer: David Michael Latt/David Rimawi/Paul Bales
Director: Joseph Lawson
Genre: Science-Fiction/Horror
Stars: Dominique Swain as Paige Morgan
Jake Busey as Adrian Reistad
Joshua Michael Allen as Lucas Moss
Christopher Karl Johnson as Dr. Josef Mengele
James Maxwell Young as Adolf Hitler

Germany, May 1945 and Dr. Josef Mengele makes his escape as the Americans close in. Cut to present day and we’re in Antarctica, as a crew begins to drill into the perma-frost but their drill stops after a few moments, hitting metal! Scraping the ice away they reveal, of all things, a swastika. A moment later three gas-masked Nazis appear out of nowhere and knock the two scientists unconscious. They then blow up the drill. Back at the research station. Dr. Reistad (Busey) seems to be something of a Mengele character himself. His superior reminds him that he once infected a whole team with influenza, just as an experiment, and now he has been caught with a deadly flesh-eating bacteria, no doubt about to try something similar. It’s pretty uncanny how like his father Jake Busey is; it’s almost like looking back in time.

A quick break to explore some scintillating dialogue from the movie so far: one scientist, out in the freezing sub-zero temperatures of Antarctica, remarks “It’s cold!” Uh-huh! Where did you think you were going, idiot? The freaking Bahamas? When they get to the drilling site and see nothing there they think it might have been an explosion, Dr. Ross says “There’d be wreckage” to which another scientist nods and says “He’s right!” Yeah, he’s right. Was that necessary? It’s fucking obvious he’s right. Does this guy have so few lines that he needs to make pointless statements? Ans why isn’t there wreckage? All the Nazis did was throw a grenade at the drill. Wouldn’t that have caused wreckage? How about Busey when he leans down and sees red spots on the ice. After carefully examining them he declares knowledgeably, “It’s blood.” No shit, Sherlock!

Anyway, when they realise that the two scientists who went out to drill have not reported in a search party heads out onto the ice and find drag marks, which they begin to follow. Down below the ice (presumably) Paige and Mark, the two who were abducted, find themselves in a cell. Mark is taken from there by the Nazi soldiers and strapped down on a table, towards which a man (who is clearly the monstrous doctor who fled Germany) approaches, makes a cut across the top of his forehead and then Mark literally loses face as the Nazi rips the skin off, exposing the skull beneath. Yuck! It’s pretty gory, and I would assume also inaccurate. Surely the skin is anchored to the face, the head by more than just one point? I mean, it seems unlikely you could pull someone’s face off like stripping wallpaper! Mind you, I’ve never tried and never wish to, but it sounds a bit too simple.

(Somebody get my agent on the phone --- NOW!!)

The search party meanwhile finds a chasm or sinkhole or crater, or whatever you call it when there’s a big deep hole in the ice, and they abseil down, finding themselves in a massive cavern under the ice. But all is not as it should be. As if there being a bloody cavern under the ice is not odd enough! It seems to be warm, and the heat is coming from a tunnel off to the side, which they duly head towards. Our man of few lines again adds his wisdom to the dialogue: “I’m ready”, he tells them. Nobody asked. And what were they going to do if you weren’t ready? Wait till you were? Our intrepid Paige, face for the moment still attached, manages to escape by jamming a fork in the steel door as it shuts. Let’s examine this for a moment, shall we?

First, how stupid is the Nazi to give her a steel fork, a weapon she can use if she’s quick enough (which she isn’t?) --- surely a plastic one would have done just as well, or fuck it, let her use her fingers. Why should they care? They’re probably going to kill her anyway, so what does it matter? Secondly, are we supposed to believe that jamming a small piece of stainless steel into a massive hydraulic door will stop it closing? Surely the fork would just be splintered? And even if not, how does she then exploit the tiny gap this provides for her? They expect us to believe that she rolled back that big, heavy door all on her own? In her weakened state and also being, you know, a girl?

In the event, she finds Mark, or so she thinks, lying on a bed in a cubicle. Mark is in fact in the cubicle adjacent, and has lost not only his face but most of his skin, which appears to have been attached to the man she saw originally, thinking him to be her friend. This charming man then appears before her, speaking in German. She hits him and runs as klaxons blare. Suddenly she’s surrounded by these zombie things. Dr. Moss goes down the shaft (oooer!) into the darkness and is followed by a female member of the team, whom I am going to refer to as Norway Girl, as she says she's Norwegian and it's easier than figuring out what her name actually is. So we have Busey, Moss, Norway Girl, One-Liner and two others who I especially don't give a toss about, all of whom go down the chasm after the first two. At the end of the tunnel they find, to their amazement, a city, a world, a whole ecosystem including trees, mountains and lakes. This will of course all be explained in the best scientific tradition, and we will be left with no doubt that such a thing could indeed happen, fifty miles under the ice.
http://www.trollheart.com/nce1a.png
(Yes, choose beautiful Antarctica under the ice for your next holiday! Just remember to bring a spare face and brain! )

Ah, no. Busey just talks a lot of bull about people writing about this in the eighteenth century, the hollow Earth and so on. No explanation. And where does the sunlight come from? Surely the sun, powerful as it is, can’t penetrate through fifty miles of ice? Isn't that why it’s dark underwater? Sigh. Anyway, our heroes blithely blunder into a large building that looks a lot like that hangar they met the aliens in on The X-Files and rather surprisingly the doors shut and they find themselves trapped! Oh no! But worse is to come, when Dr. Mengele reveals himself and it turns out Busey is working for him, having been captured ten years previously and now turned to the Nazi cause. Just in case we’re unsure, he gives the salute and shouts “Heil Hitler!”

Mengele then weaves a rather fantastical story about having replaced over sixty percent of his skin and having survived down here under the earth, with access to all sorts of hi-tech, one of which, a sort of disintegrator weapon, he uses on one of the scientists who is --- anyone? ---- a jew. He dies particularly painfully. Good: saves me having to learn his name or refer to him again. Mengele tells the shocked crew that Busey saved his own skin by agreeing to deliver a fresh supply of “human parts” to the crazed Nazi, so that he can keep rebuilding himself as parts fail. He now shares with them his master plan which is --- anyone? Anyone at all. You there, up at the back, waving frantically --- yeah. He wants to take over the world in the name of the Nazis and bring about the Fourth Reich. Ah, bless!

Even little Paige seems to have given in to the inevitable, as she appears wearing a fetching Nazi uniform. But this particular group, Mengele tells them, aren’t to be recycled and used as parts. Oh no: they’re the finest minds of their generation (apparently) and they are to help the mad Nazi and his cohorts remain alive so that they can fulfil their grand destiny. We next see cliche city (as if we haven’t been living there for some time now) as firstly, with our intrepid band imprisoned one of them bounces a ball off the wall, “Great Escape”-style, while Moss goes on about evil triumphing when good men do nothing, except here Mengele is not suggesting they do nothing, but very much indeed. The best line comes from one of the other scientists (no I could not be bothered to learn all their names) when he says matter-of-factly “We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Well, at the box office, yes.

I love the way the scientists get all interested and professional when they meet the guy wearing Mark’s face, and are all eager to help his issues with rejection of the facial tissue. Talk about getting lost in your work! And they’re allowed to work without supervision, with all these surgical tools, chemicals and other potential weapons to hand? No wonder the Germans lost! And nobody has yet explained why all the soldiers are wearing gas masks? Seems even Nazi zombies get hungry for a bit of t&a, so we have a gratuitous gang rape scene (or it could be cannibalism; it’s never made that clear; one thing is certain though, and that is that afterwards one of the zombies has taken part of her skin and grafted it onto his neck, so I assume she didn’t live through the ordeal!) while the other girl loses the top half of her head, as Busey extracts stem cells from her brain with a syringe.

(I must be out of my mind to have accepted a role in this picture! (Sorry...))

Now. Let’s recap. Sorry. I will have my little joke, won’t I? These Nazi lunatics, led by the insane Angel of Death himself, are below the ice experimenting on human bodies --- apparently; though there’s been no mention of people going mysteriously missing over the years, which would have been something of a clue. And this is fucking Antarctica after all: it’s not like you’re going to be able to trap unwary travellers passing through! --- and plotting the return of the Reich. Can anyone guess who’s about to step into the picture? Come on now, think hard. What’s a Reich without a fuhrer to lead it? Adolf Hitler, come on down!

That sounds brilliant. Will watch.

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(Isn't this a scene from "Castle Wolfenstein"?)
Of course, now is when it gets really stupid. No, really. Norway Girl chooses this moment to tell Busey that she is pregnant, and it must be his baby because suddenly he gets all emotional and supportive, and they embrace tenderly while trying not to slip on the discarded brain of their former colleague and friend. Nice. And then he punches her out, after which she finds herself strapped to a table as loopy Busey prepares to harvest the stem cells from her baby. Now where was I? Oh yes, der fuhrer. Well, did you ever see Futurama? Of course you did. So you’ll understand when I mention how President Nixon ended up in that.
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(Ach du liber! Who iz pushink who arount now, ja?)

Yep: Hitler’s a gigantic fighting robot, ready to reclaim his kingdom in the name of the German people. Oh, and in case you were wondering how they were going to get back to the surface in order to install the glorious Fourth Reich? Yeah, they have a spaceship.
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(Now that's how to break the ice! Oh I really am sorry...)

Mecha-Hitler finally does us all a favour and puts an end to Mister One-Liner, slicing his head off, which I must admit is a part at which I cheered, then prepares to pilot his massive starship out of the centre of the Earth, while the others (those who are still left alive) being of no further use are taken to the labs. Now I assume that for some reason at this point the writer (I use the word very liberally, I assure you) seems to think that nobody has sussed out that Paige is not really working for the Nazis and is just biding her time, waiting for her moment. Really? So it’s a total surprise when she suddenly turns against Mengele, slicing his throat open and proving she was just playing along? Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Didn’t see that coming at all…

And come on! There has to be some weird connection between the fact that one of the major films Dominique Swain is known for is “Face/off” and this film involving people ripping people’s, you know, faces off? It’s even underlined near the end, when, having beaten the zombie who was wearing Mark’s face, Lucas rips it off saying “This isn’t yours!” Oh, the subtlety! Hitler, meanwhile, is still heading towards the surface in his spaceship, while Mark, oddly enough, is still alive, minus skin, which makes it rather awkward when they head back to rescue him and find that there’s very little to rescue. They have to put him out of his misery, which unfortunately won’t happen for me for another twenty long minutes.

Some more inspired dialogue to while away the time: Airbase replies to the sighting of a “UFO” with a question as to whether it is hostile, to which the pilot replies “It’s covered with Nazi swastikas! I’m calling that hostile!”
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(That is one BIG motherfuckin' ship!)

And as the group remaining below trying to get away from the Nazi zombies runs into a locked door, dead end, one of the others remarks “I think I saw some other doors along the corridor!” And you didn’t think to fucking mention this at the time? You waited till they were trapped and THEN considered bringing it up??

So now we have a sort of Star Wars escape and laser gunfight (and the bad guys still couldn’t hit a target if their lives depended on it, which of course they do) while Hitler’s spaceship proves equal to the very best the air force of, um, New Zealand can throw at it. Kind of hard to see how this thing is going to be beaten, unless there happens to be some sort of override at the base. But then, they would never be that stupid, would they? Answers on a postcard please … what? Oh, fuck off and ask your parents!

Okay, okay, they weren’t that stupid. Hitler is on his merry way, intending to bomb “all non-Aryan countries” --- that would be all of them, then, including his beloved Germany --- and has had Busey put the flesh-eating virus (remember that? Yeah, they’re actually connecting the dots up here! This is almost proper writing. Well, I wouldn't go that far...) into the bombs. Oh no, hold on: he’s returned in a “lifeboat” and is now chasing the remaining two scientists around the complex. Huh? He abandoned his spaceship to go back and deal with two of his enemies? Does that sound like der fuhrer we all know and love? Back on the ship, Norway Girl grabs a grenade and twists the cap. A chain reaction begins to tear the spaceship apart, but not before they can get off one --- Doodlebug? Seriously? They’ve had seventy years to perfect their delivery system and they’re still using the old V1 rocket? Nobody thought of upgrading it?

Ok, wait what? No, it’s not a bomb, it’s an escape craft and the two heroes are in it? When did that happen? Oh I guess this is Hitler’s lifeboat, which he used to get back to the base and which they’ve now appropriated. It flies out of the --- what? The ship? Weren’t they supposed still to be on the base? Or were they on the spaceship all along? Ah, okay, now I think I get it. When the massive ship lifted off, it was basically most of the base, so everyone has in fact been running around on the spaceship. Really, Trollheart! When someone goes to all the trouble of writing such fine dram you should really try to keep up with the intricate plot! Right. I’m caught up now. So the hero and his girl have escaped from the exploding spaceship and have landed back on the ice, just as the behemoth topples down out of the sky. Perhaps not the best of moves?

Well, the spaceship crashes and sinks through the ice, and that’s the end of that, but old Hitler is not so easily done for, and he comes snarling out of the wreckage, bent on destruction. A fighter jet distracts him just long enough --- before being blown out of the sky --- for Moss to get on his back and inject the flesh-eating bacteria into his shell, which happily chews away his flesh and Hitler’s a goner, sinking dramatically through the ice and falling into the chasm.

Just to ensure there is no cliche left unused, Moss proposes to Paige and she smiles. “Where do you want to go for the honeymoon?” he asks. “Somewhere warm!” she quips. They seem mighty happy, considering all their colleagues and friends have died in particularly gruesome ways. Oh well, at least they're still alive, though their acting career may be on life support after this!

Well, they may have saved Hitler’s brain but not the brain of the writer of this trash. Funny in its absurdity, totally failing to be horrific even despite the small amounts of gore, factually up its arse and totally unbelievable with a ridiculous ending, it’s everything that makes it a candidate for derision and review in this dark cinema of the crappiest of the crap.

Questions?
Apart from the obvious --- who would write this garbage and why? --- there are several which raise their heads.

What role does Norway Girl play in the movie? She seems linked to Busey’s character, as if she’s working with him, but then she slips Moss a surgical scissors, which seems to have been noted and ends up with the three girls heading off to the showers, one to be gang-raped and presumably killed, one for experimental brain surgery, and she’s left alone, until Busey discovers she’s pregnant, whereupon he helps himself to the embryo’s stem cells, which I imagine kills her baby in the process. Then, later, she seems all sort of pally with Busey and when she grabs the grenade and he takes it from her (not sure who activates it but I think it might be her) they embrace just before the ship blows up. So, were they in it together, was there a relationship, was the baby his and did he regret his actions at the end? Seems unlikely at least for the last, since he’s grinning like an idiot and saying “Bomb them all!” Very confusing.

Speaking of bombing, what exactly was Hitler’s plan? He says to bomb all non-Aryan countries, but lunatic though he was, and not averse to the odd spot of genocide, Hitler had enough sense to know that you need to leave a living workforce to carry out your labours. If he infects the entire population of the Earth, who’s he gonna rule? The Fourth Reich will be a very sparse population indeed. And isn’t he going to need servicing, regular battery charges, oil and a tuneup, that sort of thing? Who’s going to do this if there’s nobody left alive? Maybe he means to bomb a few cities, show his enemies that, to quote the Borg, resistance is futile, and expect then that everyone will be his slaves? But of course he is mad, so maybe he hasn’t thought that far ahead. Like the writer…

How did good ol’ Mark survive for as long as he did without any skin? Surely shock and trauma at the very least would have done for him? Yet it’s nearly the end of the movie before they come across him again and put him out of his misery. Could he really have lasted that long?

How did the sun manage to shine through all those layers of ice, and allow crops, to say nothing of trees and hills, to grow?

What is it with Mengele’s “explanation” of his death being misreported? He goes on about replacing body parts but is told that his bones have been conclusively identified, so how does that work? He tries to tells us that by replacing his endoskeleton (outer skin) this stopped the decay of his bones and any health problems, but that’s just ridiculous. You may as well say you can stop a car from seizing up by giving it a new coat of paint. The skin is just a shell; replacing it doesn’t stop any problems going on inside.

And how is it that if this massive research lab is here, deep under the ice, it’s manned only by Mengele, his zombie, Hitler in a box and a few drone soldiers? If this is to be the birthplace of the new Reich, don’t you think there’d be thousands, even millions of staff here? We’re supposed to believe that a few hundred --- or less --- built the staggering technological marvel we see take to the sky? Even in seventy years that’s far beyond belief without a massive army of technicians, engineers, scientists and all the backup crew.

And how have they been eating? Sure, they’re the next best thing to zombies but they can’t replace their body parts all the time. They must have to eat. And yet there are no visible sources of food. Perhaps they grow crops, but who harvests them? Don’t see no agricultural machinery, nor no slave labour force toiling in the fields!

Oh, and we still don’t know, even at the end of the movie, why those Nazis are wearing gas masks! Maybe the actors were just too ashamed for their faces to be seen. I wouldn’t blame them.

Not to mention that if we're to believe (oh dear God Trollheart, stop it! Believe! If we're to believe. You're killing me...) --- oh-kay. If we're to believe within the context of the movie that Hitler has just been brought back to life just recently by the stem cells so generously donated by Norway Girl's baby, then why should he choose America as his first target? Why not go for the nemesis of his winter campaign and bomb Russia to hell? Would that not make more sense? And why go bombing the Falklands? What's there: a few thousand farmers and a bunch of sheep? Great way to start your world domination, mein fuhrer! :rolleyes:

So that’s our feature presentation for this time around. Makes “Battle beyond the stars” look like “Star Wars”, don’t it? One thing is certain though: while there are some very good movies out there, there are some unbelievably bad ones, and I fear the latter outweigh the former by some considerable margin, which means we will never be short of chum to throw into these particularly dark and choppy waters as we sail on another voyage of decrepitude and into the very heart of this huge cemetery where bad movies go to die.

As the man says, we’ll be back!

And once again, may I repeat, there are no refunds. As a suitably crappy science-fiction anthology programme that really wishes it was “The Twilight Zone” but is nothing close once declared:

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days to go!

And speaking of that...

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The third of the Star Trek franchise, and most certainly the darkest and most mature, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (often abbreviated to Deep Space 9 or DS9) was the first --- and only --- of the franchise not to be set on a starship. With the action centring around the Starfleet space station Deep Space 9 it left little real opportunity for the space exploration which had become part and parcel of Star Trek for over thirty years at that point, and would concentrate more on domestic issues than galactic ones, initially. It would also, rather inevitably given that both series were running at the same time, feature some element of crossover with Star Trek: the Next Generation, with Worf transferring to the station at the beginning of season four and becoming a regular and important character in the series, allowing for much development of the history and mythology of Klingons. Riker would make the odd guest appearance too, and in the very first episode Patrick Stewart starred as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, but soon the show was demonstrating that it could stand on its own, and guest slots were very limited.

As I wrote in my introduction to Babylon 5, there were many similarities between the two shows: both were set on a space station, the first time any sci-fi show had gone down that route, and given that they hit around the same time it was always seen as more than just coincidence. Both shows featured a multi-cultural, multi-species cast of characters, and both had a major war between opposing alien powers and humans which broke out in the third and fourth seasons. Both stations had maverick captains who would often bend the rules to get things done, Babylon 5 featured first a commander and then a captain, and there were echoes of this progression with Deep Space 9, as its CO began as a commander and was then later promoted to captain. Mind you, that’s the military for you. In fairness though, in Babylon 5 it was not the same man who was promoted through the ranks, whereas in DS9 it was.

But there were a lot of differences too. DS9 was commanded by a single father who brought his son along, and they lived there. There was no wormhole in Babylon 5, and the station orbited a (mostly) uninhabited planet, while Deep Space 9 was in orbit around the thriving world of Bajor. There were no ambassadors on DS9: certainly there were aliens, but they all worked for a living. Odo, the Changeling, was chief of security, Quark the Ferengi ran the local bar and casino, and Major Kira was in the Bajoran military. Although initially neither commander or captain really wanted the job, Benjamin Sisko was more vociferous in his resistance to the post than Sinclair in Babylon 5, and in the pilot episode came close to telling Picard where he could stick his job.

DS9 became famous too for being the first major sf series to cast a black actor in the top role. Avery Brooks, unknown to sci-fi at the time, took the helm of the huge station as Commander Benjamin Sisko, making him the highest-ranking black officer ---at least, in more than a bit part --- in Starfleet up to then. But it was its darker themes and its exploration of the grey areas within not only Starfleet, but war in general, that would gain DS9 its greatest accolades. People had often criticised Star Trek for its overly “happy family” attitude towards Starfleet. They were the good guys, and there was no hazy areas. Although in NextGen they began to break this down slowly, and as early as season one there was an outside threat to the Federation in the form of aliens trying to compromise and take over key positions in the govenment and military, it sadly went nowhere and was forgotten about. But the seeds had been planted, and would flower with this series, not only with the introduction of Section 31, but with the decisions, often brutal and uncompromising, that Sisko and his staff would be forced to make for the greater good. Even the aggressors in the Dominion War, which would not really get going until season three, were in ways a sympathetic race, oppressed and hunted for centuries until they fought back, though as Franklin said in Babylon 5 they were more like abused children striking back at their tormentors, and little sympathy was in the end wasted on them. Still, it showed that not every alien leader was a Hitler or a Kang. The reasons for the war are well explained and detailed in the series, and the lines between good and evil --- if such concepts even exist -- blur even more.

Deep Space 9 would also copy Babylon 5 in the idea of the story arc, where from season three onwards it really became one big story, and impossible to follow if you missed some episodes. This would be its blessing and its curse, its strength and its weakness, as many TV viewers would be unwilling or unable to put in the kind of work involved in keeping up with the multi-layered story arc, and would find themselves hopelessly lost. You could watch NextGen one week, miss ten episodes and watch the eleventh, and not really be any the poorer. Sometimes story elements would carry through, but rarely, and NextGen episodes were generally self-contained. But to watch DS9 you had to commit to it, and it demanded your full and undivided attention. Of course, like Babylon 5, Lost, 24 and later series constant watching rewarded you with surprising plot twists, revelations, answers to questions, shocks and cliffhangers. The level of detail and the quality of the writing in DS9 was second to few: only Babylon 5 could claim the same skill in character development, plotting and scene-setting. It truly was a novel for the screen, once it got going.

DS9 lasted for seven seasons, over the course of which the series totally changed its look and its ethos. In the beginning it was pretty much self-contained stories that never linked to each other, but as the series found its feet and went from season to season these sort of episodes became more and more scarce as the main story began to build. And what a story it was!

CAST
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AVERY BROOKS as Commander (later Captain) Benjamin Sisko: When Sisko arrives at Deep Space 9 he is not looking forward to his new command. He has recently lost his wife in the Borg attack at Wolf 359 (See season four of Star Trek: the Next Generation) and is posted to the space station along with his son, Jake. The loss of his wife has shaken him and he confides to Picard that he may be thinking about resigning from Starfleet. In the end of course he does not, and goes on to become the central figure in the galaxy’s biggest and most important conflict since Earth faced the Borg.

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NANA VISITOR as Major Kira Nerys: Bajorans have their surnames first, so the Bajoran military attache to Deep Space 9 is addressed as Major Kira, not Major Nerys. She is there to observe and protect Bajoran interests, as the station has been occupied at the request of the Bajoran government in response to the withdrawal of their enemies and oppressors the Cardassians, and the later discovery of a wormhole just beyond their planet, which will provide commerce and travel, will also be of strategic military importance. The Bajorans (somewhat, again, like the Narns with the Centauri) have just ended a war against the Cardassians, who occupied their planet and who would surely claim the wormhole as theirs were the Federation not protecting it. Major Kira does not like or trust Starfleet, believing they are here for their own interests (she’s right of course) but over the run of the show she not only begins to distrust them less but forms a strong bond with Sisko, becoming his right hand.
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TERRY FARRELL as Jadzia Dax: First introduced in NextGen, trills are a race of symbiotic beings, who bond with a host body and then live in concert with it. Dax is a symbiont, a trill who has had several bodies, as the aliens live much longer than most other races including humans, and whose previous host, Curzon, Sisko knew well. This makes it a little awkward when he has to face the young female Jadzia, who has all Kurzon’s memories, but they remain fast friends.
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ALEXANDER SIDDIG as Doctor Julian Bashir: Arrogant, opinionated and with an ego the size of the space station (hey! Are we talking about Dr Franklin here?) Bashir is a young doctor who requested posting to DS9 because, as he says himself with naive excitement, he wanted to practice "frontier medicine". He’s young and handsome and thinks he knows it all, but like every other character here he develops significantly over the course of the series, till at the end he’s virtually unrecognisable from the man we see in the pilot.
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COLM MEANEY as Chief Miles O’Brien: One of the very earliest transfers from NextGen, O’Brien began as helmsman in that series and was later promoted to Transporter Chief, but it is as Chief Engineer that he transfers to Deep Space 9, with a reputation for being able to fix anything from a broken transporter coil to a broken heart. Well, maybe not the last. He is Irish though!
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RENE AUBERJONOIS as Odo: Initially an unknown lifeform who was left behind by the Cardassians when they abandoned Deep Space 9 at the end of the Bajoran War, Odo later is revealed to be of the race known as Changelings, who start up the whole Dominion War. At the opening of the series though he is the station’s chief of security. Odo (no other name) is able to change his form into anything he desires, does not need sleep and has little either in the way of emotions or humour. He has, however, a very serious and almost fanatical devotion to the rule of law.
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CIRROC LOFTON, as Jake Sisko: I’ve always had something of a problem with Jake being a main character. He does come into his own later in the series admittedly, but for most of the first and second season he’s just an incidental character, mostly running around with his Ferengi contemporary Nog, and getting into trouble as teenagers do. Bah! Still, at least he’s not Wesley Crusher!
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ARMIN SHIMERMAN as Quark: One of the funniest and most popular characters in the series is Quark, the Ferengi owner of the bar on the Promenade, the leisure centre of the station. He is devoted to making a profit at any cost, tight as anything and always looking for the next big deal he can secure. He treats his staff like slaves and his family worse, and has little time for humans, though he and his cohorts provide both the best moments of comic relief and paradoxically some of the deepest moments of pathos in the series. Through him and his contemporaries we learn a starshipload more about the Ferengi, who only feature briefly and in line-drawing mode in NextGen.

Of course, there are other characters, many of them, but some only feature from time to time, while others will be important but are not introduced into the storylines till later. As ever, as these appear I will note them and let you know how important they will turn out to be.

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days to go!

Just prior to the opening of Star Trek Month, The Couch Potato wishes to pay its heartfelt respects and condolences to the family of Leonard Nimoy, who found fame and brought joy to the world as Mister Spock.
BBC News - Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek's Mr Spock, dies at 83
Nimoy had been hospitalised several times as a result of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and was rushed to hospital a few days ago with severe chest pains. He died this morning in Los Angeles.
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There will be a special, lengthy tribute to the man who was Spock during Star Trek Month, but I wanted to make this post now, having just heard of his sad passing.
Logic suggests this is a very sad day for all Trekkers, and everyone who grew up on Star Trek. Our thoughts are with his family and friends. We will never forget him.

The man was a goddamn legend. Sad to see him go, but he lived long, and prospered, and that's all anyone can ask.

Side note: great DS9 writeup! It's my favorite modern Trek series by far, and it's always nice to see it get some love! It doesn't even really get started until Sisko grows the goatee and shaves his head.

I've just written his tribute, which I'll air during Star Trek Month. A hard thing to do without the tears getting in the way... :(

Yeah, DS9 is my favourite too. I loved the way they looked into Starfleet and the Federation and said, you know, maybe this institution is not really so great after all? Closest to my favourite sf series, but then, you know what that is...!

Several years ago, I actually had the pleasure of meeting Leonard Nimoy in a Toronto elevator. I was too young to understand who he was, but my mom raved about it for weeks afterwards. She showed me a picture of Mr. Spock, and I told her that no, it couldn't have been him; he didn't have pointy ears.

RIP. :(

If it's Babylon 5, marry me.

Just choose your ring... ;)
Have you not been reading my coverage here? The very best sci-fi and even the second best drama ever on TV, and I'll fight anyone to the death who says otherwise! :ar_15s: