by Jane | Mar 20, 2015 | Write Here Write Now
For the past 18 months or so, I have been delightfully bingeing new and old TV shows, courtesy of my new Roku and companies such as Netflix and Amazon. Question is, is this a good or a bad thing?
First, let me say that I have been enjoying it a great deal. I started out with shows such as The Tudors, then to the Harry Potter movies, Mission Impossible (the TV show, not the movie), on to Supernatural (to get caught up before the new season) and the Star Trek TV shows (yes, all of them). Having exhausted TV shows I knew, I searched for other scifi/fantasy shows. I found Firefly and Continuum that way. Again, I really enjoyed both.
Then came Grimm. TNT started running four episodes each Wednesday night. I thought it was a new show with a new idea. Taking advantage of the bingeing trend to present a new show. Eventually, through Twitter and also just by checking the descriptions on FIOS of each episode (what do you mean Season 2 — this is a brand new show, isn’t it?). Well, as soon as I learned that it was an old series that would start its new season on NBC in the fall, I figured I needed to catch up even quicker. Voila! I discovered it on Amazon Prime — free for the taking for any Prime customer (me!).
So, now I’m watching 3 or 4 episodes a day, rather than a week, get to Season 4 and BOOM! Season 4 costs money – $1.99 per episode for non-HD. Netflix offers it on DVD, but it’s not available yet. So, here I am sitting around, missing Grimm — Nick, Monroe, Isabelle, and the rest, wondering when I can see a new episode.
Yes, I know. It’s kind of like the old days when you had to wait all summer for new episodes. But somehow this is different. The Star Treks are available — I can watch them any time I wish. As to Firefly and Continuum — I knew they were limited series. I hesitated watching them for that reason. But that’s OK because I knew it going in. In the meantime, I’ve watched the movie Serenity which ties up loose ends for Firefly, and I’ve heard there will be another season of Continuum.
I think the point is I really miss Grimm, because I was watching several episodes a day, and it was abruptly taken from me. I figure eventually Amazon will release the episodes free on Prime and Netflix will release the DVDs. And if not in time for Season 5 on NBC, I’ll DVR those and just wait. (I can do that — look at how long we’ve waited for Star Wars 7).
So, back to my original question — to binge or not to binge. I say, go ahead and binge — you get a chance to enjoy hours of a TV show you like. Just realize that it may be taken from you and you might miss it sooner that you expect.
by Jane | Mar 16, 2015 | Write Here Write Now
The Martian is Andy Weir’s first book and the best science fiction novel I have read in a very long time. Much of the book is told through a journal by astronaut Mark Watney, who is stranded on Mars. Believing he is dead after a freak accident pierces his space suit, his fellow astronauts take off for Earth and abandon him.
After he manages to patch up both himself and his space suit, Watney is faced with how to survive on Mars with limited resources until the next Mars mission arrives in four years. Since the team left early due to a sand storm, there are supplies left, enough for six people for a couple of months, but still not enough to sustain one person for four years.
Luckily, Watney, with his expertise in both botany and engineering, finds ways to extend his resources. The fun is taking the trip along with him. In his journal, we see Watney’s ingenuity as well as his wit. We can follow his thought processes as he uses his knowledge of science in creative ways, but we also get insight into his personality. While The Martian is very suspenseful at times, it can also be very funny, as the astronaut uses his humor to dispel his fear of death.
Well worth the read, I highly recommend The Martian for any fan of science fiction. I hope we see a lot more from Andy Weir in the future.
by Jane | Mar 6, 2015 | Write Here Write Now
I thought I could not let another post go by without a tribute to Leonard Nimoy. I have read many tributes online and don’t feel like I could equal any of them. So, I just thought I’d say how he was an important part of my childhood and I will not forget him. I’m sorry he’s gone, but he will live on in his work.
Here are a few images I found. If interested, you can find more on my Pinterest page.
by Jane | Feb 27, 2015 | Write Here Write Now
I am happy to announce that I have two poems coming out in magazines this month and next. “The Incantation” is now available in the February 2015 issue of Trysts of Fate, which you can access here. Trysts of Fate is a paranormal romance magazine which publishes stories, poetry, and articles about the genre. I’ve looked at some of the poems and stories and they are quite good. I’m happy to be associated with this magazine.
My other poem, “The Deserted Playground”, will be in Issue #11 of Literary Hatchet, which will be out in April. This magazine describes itself as follows:
“The Literary Hatchet publishes contemporary short fiction, poetry, prose, photography, cartoons, and humor by established and emerging writers and artists from around the world. Subjects range from mystery, murder, macabre, horror, monsters, ghosts, and things that go bump in the night.”
The Literary Hatchet has both online and print versions of its magazine. The online version is provided as a free pdf, or you can buy the print version. Either can be obtained here.
by Jane | Feb 20, 2015 | Write Here Write Now
These are the Voyages — TOS: Season One by Marc Cushman gives an extraordinary amount of detail about Star Trek, starting with a biography of Gene Roddenberry and moving though the production of “Operation: Annihilate”, the last Season 1 episode filmed. I want to recommend it, but with a caveat. The first few chapters are so dense and detailed, I found them hard to read. I had to read one chapter, then set the book aside for a while. After finishing five chapters, I set it aside, not sure if I would pick it up again.
Don’t get me wrong — I enjoyed reading about how Star Trek was conceived and evolved. What dragged me down were things like Lucille’s biography and how Desilu was formed, along with long bios of most of the production staff for the second pilot Where No Man Has Gone Before.
But one day I found myself out of reading material and went back to These are the Voyages. Chapter 6 was about the making of the first pilot, which I found very interesting. Chapter 7 had more bios of staff, but also discussed the selection of the cast (aside from William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, already cast). From there on, almost every chapter dealt with the production of one episode, and I found myself reading two or three chapters at a sitting, instead of just one.
There were several things I found interesting in this book. One was script development, how the scripts were assigned, then written and rewritten, taking into account not only the characters in the series but also how much the episode would cost to produce. Also, production was almost always behind schedule and over budget, and the air order of the episodes was different from production order due to the amount of special effects needed in certain episodes.
Another point of interest for me was the development of a specific character, namely Yeoman Rand. According to the book, Rand was supposed to have a sexual tension with Kirk. Me, I never got that. The only thing bordering on that that I remember was in the episode “Miri”, when Rand confessed that she had wanted the captain to look at her legs while on the bridge. Of course, there was also her attempted rape by him in “The Enemy Within”, but that could have been just random. Frankly, I always found her very distant and was glad when the character was deleted from the series. (Or maybe it was just the hair.)
There were other things I found intriguing, but in the interest of brevity, I want to jump to a discussion on Harlan Ellison and “The City on the Edge of Forever”. Most Star Trek fans know that he was very upset about the rewrite of his script to the point that he wanted to use a pseudonym in the credits. As implied in an earlier paragraph, most writers were heavily rewritten, sometimes by Roddenberry, sometimes by Gene Coon (producer of the show starting mid-first season), and sometimes by a story editor on staff. Sometimes all of the above.
Cushman included a summary of Ellison’s original script, which was excellent and quite different from the script that aired. It was exciting and contained a lot more action than the aired episode. But it also seemed to me that there was enough in there to make a movie, not just a tv show. Many of the changes were for economy, others for Roddenberry’s vision. For instance, he would never have allowed a drug dealer on board the Enterprise. Still, Ellison unfortunately never got over his anger, despite the success of the aired episode. (As of this writing, I have discovered a book that tells the story of Ellison’s original script. It is entitled Harlan Ellison’s The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay and is available on Amazon.)
In conclusion, I would suggest that if you like Star Trek and want to learn more about the little tidbits of how it got on the air, pick up These are the Voyages — TOS: Season One by Marc Cushman. Just realize that you may have to struggle through the first few chapters, and you’ll be fine.
