May 27 - What's up

What is new?

1) “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” S2 is over. By now all of the couples have split up: Skye has become a full agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. while Grant is firmly Hydra once more; Melinda appears to have gone back to her ex, leaving Coulson behind; and Simmons was eaten by an alien rock, while Fitz wasn’t – so it is anyone’s guess in figuring out how it will go in S3. But for now, “Agents” are over. (If you not count an occasional fanfic, that is).

2) The latest season of “River Monsters”. Make no mistake – I like this show and I like JW. Compared to the other shows on both “Animal Planet” and “Discovery Channel”, RM is certainly hardcore – dealing with nature, exotic and foreign countries, and even showing some forensic science, especially in the earlier seasons. But even now, when compared to other shows on AP, which don’t have animals in them per se (i.e. “Tanked”) or show them in a very specific light (i.e. “Too Cute”), RM is still amazing! ...sadly, it still has to end.

Let me elaborate. On MLP: FIM there is Pinkie Pie, who loves to throw parties, but does not know when to stop (that is her weakness, so to speak) them. RM is like that. Certainly, JW loves the benefits, the prestige, et cetera that it brings him, but enough is enough. He has exhausted the topic, for the seasons of RM are becoming shorter and shorter, with more spectacle and less science, which is not good – not to mention that in the reputed RM S8 JW plans to focus on sea fish instead, thus defeating the actual concept of his show instead. JW, it was a great show while it lasted, but it still must end – if not with a bang, then with a whimper, but still end...

3) And as for MLP: FIM itself, so far it is rather interesting, even as it is determined to return the villains from the previous MLP cartoon incarnation – Tirek, Smooze... Now, of course, there are the Arimaspians, who appear to be based at least in part on Grogan, another villain from the past – but that is not THE interesting part.

THE interesting part is that the entire Arimaspian/Gryphon conflict was taken straight from the classical Greeks, who had both of their monsters in their mythos. The gryphons are, of course, the gryphons, while their enemies were a mythical race of one-eyed people – just think Cyclopes, but human-sized. The Arimaspians constantly tried to steal the gold from the Gryphons..., which brings us back to MLP: FIM. Interesting, no?

...Anyways, this is for this time – “Agents” are “Agents”; RM is getting too successful for its own good; and MLP: FIM is actually using real-life mythology for its episodes. Until next time!

Of Cybersix and other shows

Let us talk about a past cartoon series, called Cybersix. In those series, a leather-clad, genetically enhanced, (cross-dressing) super heroine fought against various Frankenstein-like monsters of an evil Nazi scientist, von Richter. This went on for 13 very successful episodes, and then it stopped. I cannot help but wonder why.

Cybersix had all the elements that a show – even a cartoon show – needs to succeed. It had scripts that were decent at worst and impressive at best. It had very wonderful audio, including the actors who did the voices. The technical details were also solid – yes, it was mostly the colors, the drawings (background), but still, they worked well. 

The fanbase? Back in 1999 fanfiction and fanart sites were not as well developed as they are now, but they were already there, plus the show did reruns, at least for a while. Yes, for a single-season, 13-episode show it had reruns for few years indicating that it was successful, at least for a while. 

And yet there was no follow-up; the last episode ended with an open hook that implied that some sort of a sequel could be in the wings; but nothing followed. Cybersix just died – irrelevant whether a whimper or a bang – and so far it is not being resurrected. Why?

Hard to say. The original comics did not belong to the modern day entertainment giants – DC, Marvel, Disney: Cybersix hails from Argentina, not the US. It is possible that as an ‘alien’ it was treated as an unnecessary rival that had to be put down, not encouraged by the giants mentioned above: the series is very popular in Canada, Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, but apparently not in the States – maybe that’s the problem.

Of course there is also the fact that Cybersix’s creators were involved in a lawsuit against a TV show called Dark Angel, which was American (i.e. the States) and which did have similarities with Cybersix; eventually the lawsuit was dropped by Cybersix’s team, but Dark Angel itself was also cancelled, just after two seasons; perhaps that is why Cybersix hasn’t returned yet – maybe there was some sort of a deal to put down both shows in order to settle the suit...

Still, Cybersix may still have its last hurrah in 2014, as Discotek Media apparently plans to release all 13 episodes on a DVD, so let us wait and see...and as we do that, let me also point out to other shows that will be returning onto the TV screens in a near future.

1) MLP: FIM. The 4^th season is coming, and it seems that Twilight Sparkle will be once again battling against the forces of chance and change: the rumors say that the elder princesses, Celestia and Luna, will be kidnapped and TS shall go to the Everfree Forest in order to save them. The Everfree Forest is a land where seasons change on their own and animals and plants are not dependent on ponies to live their lives – therefore it is evil (according to the show’s logic) and must be avoided. And people wonder what is wrong with America – if your own TV shows undermine your own politics, naturally at least some of the new generation will grow up with conflicting messages in their heads; yes conflict may be a part of democracy, but MLP: FIM has no democracy in it whatsoever – zing!

And speaking of MLP: FIM, some people were giving Andy Price a hard time because he was going to be drawing a winged Twilight in the show’s comic-verse. People! Grow up! Andy does only what he is paid to do – if he is paid to draw a winged Twilight he will do it, a wingless Twilight – he will do it too. This fact only points-out that the show’s 4^th TV season is indeed at hand and the people at Hasbro have finally began to try to combine their multiple ‘verses together, make them more coherent and compatible with each other, nothing more.

2) And secondly, the Canadian TV series, Lost Girl, is also returning – on November 10^th. It has also dealt with a changing main heroine, but whereas MLP: FIM is saying loud and clear to everybody – winged TS is here to stay at least for a while - Lost Girl has had Bo ascend (dawn?) and then largely forgot about it – Bo before and after dawning is the same Bo, only perhaps with some newer powers. That said, the show-verse itself appears to be changing: now there are humans that are aware of the Fae and are not cowed by their powers; they may actually seeking to exploit them, as Isaac Taft tried to do. However, the show’s slot has also changed, from 9 to 10 pm, making me wonder if the show is slowly losing popularity – or has acquired some enemies that try to push it out of the earlier time slot to make it harder to watch – or it will contain even more mature and dark elements than before; either way, I will certainly watch it; hopefully, you will to.

So: one good show from the past that may be coming back on DVD, and two other shows that are still coming to the TV screen with new seasons and episodes.

Dinosaurs & little ponies: law of marketing & selling in action

1) In 2005 BBC released a two-part show called The Truth about Killer Dinosaurs. It was an amazing documentary, much better than the later dinosaur shows such as Jurassic Fight Club and was conveniently forgotten by the dinosaur fan crowd after its’ release for showing some unorthodox conclusions about Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor dinosaurs. Now, in 2013, BBC decided to reanimate the documentary by giving their DVD a brand new cover that has nothing to do with the actual documentary: it features T-Rex attacking a long-necked sauropod, even though this documentary had no sauropods in it.

The textual description is completely misleading as well: “New research has led to novel ways of seeing some of the most brutal killers in history. The ubiquitous Tyrannosaurus rex: was he king of the dinosaurs or a mediocre scavenger? The feared Velociraptor: six-foot tall like in the movies or small and covered in feathers?” No offence, but in paleontology an 8 year gap means that the research used in this documentary is no longer new, and the show doesn’t focus on Tyrannosaurus’ lifestyle, all that mattered was could it defeat Triceratops or get gored instead? That is just pure misdirection and completely unnecessary: The Truth about Killer Dinosaurs is a very impressive documentary that does not need misleading images and text to be sold. But that is the law of the market for you.

2) Some time ago, a brony with too much time on his hands made a five-minute presentation on YouTube about alicorns – Twilight & Cadence vs. Celestia & Luna, claiming that Celestia & Luna have had to ascend as Twilight & Cadence did or it would make no sense other than to make money for Hasbro. Well, guess what, comrade: that is the bottom line for Hasbro: MLP: FIM has to make money for them, otherwise it is cancelled (which does not discount reruns, I admit). 

Let me briefly elaborate. The wise brony pointed out that ever since LF sold her rights of the show to Hasbro her canon – Celestia & Luna were born alicorns, not made – is no different from his own. He is correct: Hasbro know can tweak the canon however it likes – LF is unlikely to take them to court, the outcome is too unpredictable, but...

But the audience of the show does not care. Do not forget – most of them are girls (presumably) around 12 years of age on average. At this point of age they do not care as to how the ponies on the show get their wings – they just want to see more of them... or less. Hasbro – who has to make money – will do its best to ensure that the audience will buy those new winged alicorns, but it is unlikely that this will require any sort of explanation as to how Twilight & Cadence are different from Celestia & Luna. All four are pony princesses, so they all are winged, simple enough and the buyers will buy them.

Or not, you never know with teen and preteen children. Cadence has already appeared less than half-a-dozen times in the entire show up to date (that is 66 episodes, so she appeared roughly in 1/11^th of the entire show alongside Shining, so not a lot) and if Twilight with wings is less popular than Twilight without them, then Twilight will lose them (in a great, dramatic episode, no doubt) and Hasbro will... if not make money, then stop losing it – no pony-brony logic here, just the law of the market.

End

MLP:FIM & "Lost Girl" - the issue of changing, part 2

And so the 3^rd season of “Lost Girl” came to a close. What can I say about it? It was rushed.

The first two thirds of the 3^rd season (pardon the alliteration) were about Bo digivolving into the next stage of the succubus-hood. Regrettably, all came down to Bo reviving Dyson from the dead, and while I have nothing against the good ship Bo/Dyson, I have to point out that the powers of life and death are not associated with the succubae as a rule. Yes, obviously, Bo was initially made a succubus because her being would be simply cliché, but she could have at least grown wings or a tail or something along those lines.

The make-up budget for the show didn’t allow an extensive amount of prosthetics in the BtVS fashion?  

 Perhaps, but they did not have to be worn for a long amount of time – just long enough to make an impression. Instead, we had Bo appear (in flashes) looking crazy with some sort of a savage hairstyle, clearly implying horns...so there were horns, just really cheap knock-offs.

That said, my main problem is the last third of the plot in the season: out of nowhere the issue of human-Fae interaction finally came ‘online’... and Vex has basically wasted the Morrighan. What a waste. She survived Aoife and the Naga-Garuda feud only to fall to one of her ex-minions. Oh well.

Still, the Morrighan’s fate is just one of the casualties that befell the 3^rd season of “Lost Girl”. The previous seasons were generally wholesome and coherent, while this one appears to be more of two seasons, two plotlines, smashed into one, with only some moderate connections between the two of them – namely, Bo’s father, the Wanderer.

What sort of a Fae is the Wanderer? The Wandering Jew, maybe? Because I seriously doubt that Aoife slept with Carl Wanderer, an infamous American murderer. I mean sure, Aoife can probably sleep with a murderer if she wants to get ahead, she does not shy from killing people herself, but Carl Wanderer was a real-life person, and “Lost Girl” doesn’t mess with the real world all that well.

That said, I am nowhere near certainty regarding the identity (or the species?) of Bo’s dad. At the end of one of the episodes, Mr. Trick (who at the end of S3 went off to Scotland with the blonde Stella-star), looked at a rather Jersey Devil-like image: this was the episode’s heavy hint that Bo was going to meet him in the future – i.e., her dad might be the Jersey Devil or a similar creature...

Yet all of this is besides my point, which is as following: two thirds of the S3 were spent on Bo being forced by an internal reason to evolve, and once she did (and proved it by bringing Dyson back to life), this whole plot just vanished into thin air, leaving Bo in a messed-up relationship with Lauren, and nothing else. That is just wrong and unfair both to Bo and to the audience: if both have spent so much time with Bo’s evolution, then either this sort of an abrupt dismissal does not make sense, or Bo’s evolution was unnecessary, because it can be dismissed so abruptly. Pick your choice, or make your own theory, I am listening.

If Bo’s metamorphoses have amounted to nothing, then so have Twilight Sparkle’s, actually. Firstly, the comics (which take place after MLP: FIM S3) show her as a unicorn, rather than an alicorn. Why? Twilight’s ascension was a big deal, to ignore it in the comics seems wrong, again (as is the case with Bo).

Let me elaborate (hopefully). In MLP, an alicorn is a superior being (towards other ponies), to become an alicorn is essentially is to stop being a pony (regardless of the sub/species) and to become a demigod of some sort. In the show, TS became an alicorn, in the comics she did not. And again, WTF? If her becoming an alicorn is a big deal, then the comics should not ignore this; if it is so easily ignored, then it is not a big deal and should not have been made in the first place: the alicorn princess Trollestia is not canon, TS and her friends did not have to be pranked so nastily.

Unlike “Lost Girl”, though, I have a theory: when TS became an alicorn at the end of S3, this caused a backlash of criticism from the show’s fans, so now, if not Lauren Faust herself, then the other members of the Hasbro team scurry to undo the damage caused by this ep. In particular, they have released information that TS shall not outlive her friends, she is not immortal, she is not really an alicorn – just the same old TS, just with a pair of wings stuck to her sides. Someone, call Celestia – Trollestia has really messed this one up, a millennium up on the moon (or the sun, or a planet) is required to cool her off while the rest of the alicorn family and the Mane 6 undo her damage.

Seriously though: just like Bo, TS has been transformed by external forces outside her (their) control, and after the transformations were complete, neither of them received any benefits from this – on the country, Bo’s transformation has now become obsolete and/or ignored, while TS’s transformation has not done only that, it is in the process of becoming nullified. Why? Why have them go through it if those transformations are not going to stick? I have no idea, but both Hasbro and Showcase™ have let their heroines down, period.

MLP: FIM & "Lost Girl" - the issues of change

Sometime in the past, I got a chance to watch the short version of MLP: FIM the third season, and currently I am feeling more and more confused about this show – what the hay is going on there?

Let me elaborate. All of the main villains on this version of MLP are shapeshifters. I am talking about real villains, not one hit wonders such as Gilda or Flim & Flam (Trixie’s return was just a nod to her popularity among the fans, I reckon), those who usually take two episodes to be dealt with.

Judge for yourself. Nightmare Moon (unlike Princess Luna) seems to be mainly a being of the mist, taking on various guises – an evil alicorn, a thorn in a manticore’s paw, a group of Shadowbolts and so on. Changing shape and appearance was natural to her, but when she was hit by the elements of Harmony and became Princess Luna instead, that was it. Princess Luna she has remained and did not change her appearance once (discounting any possible bloopers made by the show’s illustrators). 

Discord is trickier. In S2 he was basically the same as Nightmare Moon in S1, using his power to change, and not just his own shape, but the reality around to him, save that he worked much more actively against the Mane 6 and was more dangerous. In S3 he supposedly was redeemed, but that episode felt rushed, and so far Discord had not been a big part of the show, so maybe he is bidding his time before doing something that will cause him to be petrified once more, who knows? The important thing is that he apparently cut down on his shapeshifting too now that he is a good guy.  

As a queen of the changelings, Chrysalis is no slouch at changing her appearance, and she has not appeared in S3. Her appearance in the comics (which I have not seen, not really), however is still that of a villain, and not really a sympathetic one, not even by the ponies standards. She has kept her abilities, though.

Finally, S3 had introduced King Sombra, formerly from the Crystal Empire. He too was a shapeshifter, similar to Nightmare Moon rather than to Discord or Chrysalis, appearing sometimes as a unicorn and sometimes as mass of shadows. It is unknown if he kept his shapeshifting powers, but because he has not been redeemed either, my money’s on the positive answer in that regard.

So. When a major villain is redeemed, he or she apparently loses the power to change, especially their shape and appearance. If they keep this power, they remain evil (and unsympathetic) instead. That is one.

And two was the third season’s finale, when Twilight Sparkle accidentally changed her friends’ destinies by transforming their ‘cutie marks’ into different ones, and to her apparent surprise, she found that they sucked in their new roles, all of her friends were “one-trick ponies”, capable of doing only one job really well, and unable to adapt their attitudes or strategies in order to suit their new circumstances, period. Ergo, TS had to put things exactly as they were to make everyone happy again – and then she became an alicorn.

Now, alicorns are immortal, and at least in case of Princess Celestia, they do not change at all. Princess Celestia, in particular, remained as she was for at least 1000 years while her sister was on the moon and Discord was petrified. That said, she was also apparently weaker than Discord was one on one (as she was with Chrysalis, FYI), and she certainly kept away from NM until the latter became Princess Luna once more and thus non-confrontational. Could it be that by making TS into an alicorn, Celestia has made TS weaker, magic-wise? Who knows...?

I know one thing for certain: MLP: FIM makes adaptability and transformation look evil, shows that being a one-trick pony is a good thing and a key to a road for happiness and stability, and has made its leading lady into a being who is immortal and thus cannot change and become a different being, either for better or for worse. I do not know what MLP’s message here is, but I do not think that I like it.

Still, while forced transformations appear to be over for TS (she did not ask to be an alicorn, you know), the heroine from another show, i.e. Bo Jones from “Lost Girl” is not done with them yet. Right now, “Lost Girl” is in its 3^rd season as well, and Bo has ended up in a position where she to change willingly and become a better (more powerful?) Fae or she will transform unwillingly, into some sort of a feral creature called an UnderFae.

Let us be frank here. I like “Lost Girl”, but still think that it has its flaws too: the tendency to lump everything that is not human as Fae (a succubus, for example, is not a faerie, but a demon – a completely different being) is one of them. (Well, except for the Naga and the Garuda from S2, but they are a very different topic.)

Yet I find S3 of “Lost Girl” particularly disappointing. Firstly, it is obvious that by the end of it Bo will break-up with Dr. Lauren (breaking the hearts of half of her fandom in the process) and ship-up with Dyson. Personally, I do not have anything against Dyson, but still, it is only Bo’s species (succubus vs. vampire) that make this something short of a cliché, where the hero gets the girl – this diminishes not just Bo and her relationship with Lauren, but also Dyson as well.

And the diminishment of Dyson has one more dimension, tied to the rest of the S3. In the 2^nd season, “Lost Girl” really began to develop aspects of Dyson’s character, his past, and also - the Celtic elements of the show. “Lost Girl” began to really go somewhere... but now this tendency has been abandoned in favor of the Fae creatures all over the world – Greek Amazons, Hindu Rakshasas, Slavic Poludnicas, and so on, and the same can be said about Dyson’s back story: it has been abandoned as well, a great pity in my opinion.

Therefore, to add injury to insult, on top of those disappointing developments, there is Bo’s forced transformation: no matter what Mr. Trick tells Bo, even if she does evolve into someone more powerful, she will not be her old self anymore – and Bo has accepted that. She does not try to discover anything, any way to get herself out of this mess, she just goes on wherever Mr. Trick leads her, and any arguments between them are basically reduced to childish tantrums on Bo’s part, with everyone involved knowing fully that she will do as asked, she just needs to vent first. That is character diminishment as well as a transformation of Mr. Trick into someone who runs more and more of Bo’s life – probably not a good thing either.

Anyways, before this becomes a full-blown rant (or a criticism) of “Lost Girl”, let me conclude that both it and MLP: FIM seem to have diminished in their 3^rd seasons, the latter by continuing to claim that transformation is bad, stability is good (think Orwell’s sheep), and the former by forcing their main heroine into a no-choice situation and by having her go against everything that she stood for in the process.