Pretty Poison

Seen all over my flist lately :)

Go look at your blog/journal. Find the last Fandom-related thing you posted. The characters in that post are now your team-mates in the Zombie Apocalypse. How fucked are you?

*grins*

My last fandom post was my big bang fic. So I am with Sam and Dean Winchester, Bobby, Castiel...and others. On one hand, I can be quite certain my team mates will survive the zombie apocalypse. On the other hand, the mortality rate among their friends and companions tends to be near 100%. So I'm probably already craving some nice, fresh brains.

Still catching up...

( The Days )

( Day 22 - Favorite series finale )

( Day 23 - Most annoying character )

( Day 24 - Best quote )

( The Days )

Day 18 - Favourite title sequence

I have to cheat on this one and pick two, because I just couldn't choose between them. Sometimes titles can be really irritating. Back when I used to tape every show I liked, I would routinely edit out the opening titles because I knew that when I re-watched them, it would swiftly become really irritating. Especially the opening titles with some kind of voiceover. As much as I got a kick out of something like "...a word in turmoil cried out for a hero. She was Xena..." the kick fades on the twentieth repetition, you know?

But I've found a new appreciation for these things, ironically, since so many shows seem to have dispensed with them altogether. And these two (which don't include voiceovers!), I never get tired of. Or...not yet.

The first is the title sequence from Alias Season Four. They only ran it for that one season.

( Clip under the cut )

I just love the rapid flashes of all Syd's disguises over the years. Back when the series was airing, I tried every darn week to count them. I could never do it - not without cheating with freeze-frame :) This does what a title sequence should do: it sets up what the show is about. You see Syd not just in every possible alias, but in every facet of her personality. And how is it that one person can look so different in each alias, and be hot in every single one of 'em?

My second choice is probably more predictable: True Blood. Not only is it a great song, again it's the imagery I love, and the way it sets up the show.

( Clip under the cut )

In many ways, the imagery has little to do with the show: I mean, very little that you see in the opening titles actually appears in the episodes. But in another way, it's perfect, because what it does is put the episodes into a context. The sequence shows you the world True Blood exists in, a real world as well as a fictional one. It sets the scene, creates the mood. Just perfect for this show.

[And how cool are these twisty cut-tags on Dreamwidth? Finally a cut does useful stuff!]

( The Days )

Day 15 - Favorite female character

When I started this meme, I thought this should be an easy question. But the more I think about it, the harder it is to choose a favourite female character. There are so many to choose from. I love women who can kick ass: Xena, Buffy, Sidney Bristow, Sarah Connor, Aeryn Sun. I love women who are smart: Sam Carter, Willow, Lois Lane, Dana Scully, Wendy Watson. I love women who have the self-confidence to insist the world take them as they are: Inara Serra, Sookie Stackhouse, Starbuck, Cordelia Chase, Delenn. I love women who are strong because they are women and that's awesome: Mary Winchester, Ellen Harvelle, Joyce Summers, Kaylee Fry, Precious Ramotswe, Laura Roslin.

How do I choose a favourite from among all of them?

But I did come up with one. Not so much a favourite as a character who embodies all the qualities I'm talking about above: Highlander's Amanda.

( Read more... )

( The Days )

Day 13 - Favorite childhood show

Dick Turpin was written by the same man responsible for Robin of Sherwood: Richard carpenter. IMDB says it began in 1979 and other sources agree, but that doesn't match my memory. I remember watching this show with my Dad and he died in April '79. Even if it aired in January '79, he would surely have been too sick by then to watch it with me.

But, memory issues aside, this was a really great television drama. First thing to note is that it's more a re-imagining of the legend than historically accurate. The real Dick Turpin was not a nice person, he didn't ride a horse called Black Bess and he certainly didn't ride from London to York in a night (that was someone else). He was hanged in 1739, in York.

This series begins a year later, 1740, with the premise that the man hanged in York was an imposter using Turpin's name and reputation. The "real" Dick Turpin returns to his old haunt in the south. He's a good guy who was forced into military service as a young man and who found on his return that the unscrupulous local landowner (with the Dickensian name Sir John Glutton) has stolen the land he should have inherited from his father. This forces him into highway robbery, but he has a bit of Robin Hood about him. In the first episode, he gets involved with an attempt to rescue a young lad who bungles a robbery in an attempt to steal money to save his mother's home, and winds up with an unwanted "apprentice". And that's your setup for three seasons of great, family entertainment.

I loved this show. I still do - they finally released the DVDs a few years back and it stands up remarkably well. Oh, you can see it was filmed on a low budget and the film isn't exactly up to DVD quality. The choreography of the fight and chase scenes looks forced to an eye accustomed to modern stunts and hand-held camera techniques. But the writing and the performances are still good.

( The Characters )

( The Days )

Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times

Please. It would be quicker to list the episodes I haven't watched more than 5 times. Because I watch and re-watch the shows I love frequently. I replayed my ST:TNG tapes so frequently that even now when they re-run on Sky I can often name the episode from the first few seconds. I also tend to watch the whole canon of a show in a long marathon, even if it takes a couple of weeks; I only pick out individual episodes if I need them for a fanfic. So what have I seen more than five times?

All but the last season of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys; the first four seasons of Xena: Warrior Princess; all of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; all of Farscape; all of Alias; all of Ally McBeal; all of Hamish MacBeth; all of Robin of Sherwood (though a long time ago; I'm missing a season on DVD); all of Blakes 7 (again, not in the last decade); most of The X-Files (there are a few eps I routinely skip when I marathon); all of Buffy The Vampire Slayer; all of Angel; all of Millennium; all of Lois and Clark; all of Highlander and Highlander: The Raven; all of Babylon 5; Firefly; the first five seasons of Stargate SG-1; all of The Sentinel; seasons one and three of Numb3rs; all of Veronica Mars; two seasons of True Blood...

...I'm sure I'm missing a few. I'm just visualising my DVD shelves here.

I'm not up to five marathons of Battlestar Galactica yet, though I've probably seen the first two seasons more than five times. Supernatural is an odd one (for me) because there are episodes in the first three seasons I skip (Crossroad Blues because it hurts too much and Ghostfacers because it's a steaming pile of crap), but certainly all of season one would be on the list. Four and Five I have re-watched, but not five times.

So...no. I can't just pick one episode out of all that. Yes, I'm a TV addict. Well...it's more that I use TV as background noise the way a lot of people use music. So while I'm working at home or writing, I'll also be watching TV.

( The Days )

Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving

Here's another easy choice: The Sentinel.

Like many TS fen, I came to the show through the fan fiction. Unlike many TS fen, I freaking hated the fan fiction!

Let me explain. The first fandom in which I truly felt like part of the online community was Hercules (HTLJ) and to a lesser extent its sister show Xena. When HTLJ was coming to an end, I sort of drifted into Stargate SG-1 because I saw a thematic connection: both were modern reinterpretations of ancient gods. I discovered I rather liked Stargate, and found the same kind of community feeling there that I'd enjoyed among HTLJ fen.

But there were these two characters who I emphatically did not recall from the TV show, who kept showing up in Stargate fanfic. Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg. It wasn't unusual for the crossover label to be missing from these stories; I always skipped the ones that admitted it because I like to know both fandoms when I read a crossover. But these two guys just kept showing up. In particular, I loathed Blair because he talked like an illiterate teenager but context indicated I was supposed believe he was intelligent. And this 'sentinel' thing, I just didn't get it. Of course, fan writers generally do assume their readers already know stuff: it's one of the luxuries of being part of the audience you're writing for. And mostly it's fine. But all this stuff...it wasn't Stargate.

Eventually, I figured out that Sentinel was a US TV show and these two interlopers in my fandom were coming from there. I figured there must be something in it since so many Stargate fen liked it. So I went to check it out and...blow me, it was a goddamned cop show! This made no sense. I mean, what were Starsky and Hutch doing at Stargate Command? Cops didn't belong there! Not even cops with weird powers and sidekicks who talk funny and can't decide if they're a shaman or an anthropologist. I am really not a fan of crime drama so at that point I gave the whole thing up as a mass mental abberration and resigned myself to hitting the back button any time I saw words like 'sentinel', 'Ellison' or 'Blair'.

But there was this one fic. It was a long-running slash series, not brilliantly written but very engaging, and I was really into it, following it as each new chapter was posted. I wanted to know what would happen. I really did. And the damn writer snuck in a Blair cameo. After resisting my desire to lambast the author for sneakily forcing me to read something so anathema to me, I sighed, bit the bullet and asked on one of the lists if anyone could point me to resources about this Sentinel show. Sheila generously offered to send me tapes of the whole series (wow, tapes - yeah, this was in 2001, way before BitTorrent came on the scene). Around that time, I lost my job so I had a lot of time on my hands. I pretty much mainlined those tapes in a week. Maybe less.

And I got to read that fanfic to the end.

And, since I had so much time on my hands, I watched those tapes again. And then I found this idea for a Sentinel fanfic worming into my brain. And I started writing.

And the rest is history, I guess.

To this day, there remain a lot of fandom tropes I just can't get on board with. I tend to hit the back button every time I see the word 'guide'. Because in spite of everything, what I fell in love with was the canon, in all its flawed glory. This crappy cop show with its babe-of-the-week mentality and its blowing-shit-up and its hero who can't keep hold of his gun, and those weird, out of place episodes with sprit panthers and South American tribes...I just adore it. I can't even articulate why. I just do.

But it still doesn't belong with Stargate :)

( The Days )

Day 08 - A show everyone should watch

I've spent the past three days of this meme pimping Hamish MacBeth which I love because it's so quirky. It's quirky in a very British way.

Today I'm going to recommend a show that's quirky in a fandom-geeky way. That show is The Middleman. It only lasted one season, but while it's a tragedy that there'll be no new episodes, what's out there stands alone perfectly well. Aimed at a "family" audience, but jam-packed with in-jokes and references only the older generation will pick up, it's funny, exciting, heartwarming, optimistic and all-round brilliant. When I'm miserable and depressed, I used to turn to Ally McBeal, because the way she builds mountains of depression out of molehills puts my own issues in perspective. Now I turn to The Middleman first because watching a couple of episodes of Wendy Watson being awesome has yet to fail to lift my mood.

The basic concept is this: all those mad scientists and supervillains in comic books with plans to take over the world? They're really out there, they're really crazy and they really do want to take over the world. While there's no corresponding superhero in cape and tights, there is the Middleman: backed my a mysterious organisation which supplies his beyond-the-realm-of-science equipment and grumpy robotic secretary, the Middleman tracks down mad scientists, aliens, creatures from parallel dimensions and suchlike, keeping the world safe from threats it would never believe in.

It's a very cartoon-like show, both in concept and look. Dialogue is snappy and delivered fast: it shouldn't work, but somehow it does, once you get into the rhythm of it. And it's got geek references galore - the obvious comic superhero stuff, and nods to cult sci-fi old and new. But you don't need to get the references to enjoy it - I'm sure I miss a bunch of them.

The characters: ( Cut because this got long. )

All that said, I'm almost glad The Middleman was cancelled, because I think it would have had difficulty staying this awesome. Don't get me wrong - another season would have been amazing! But six of them...I don't see that working. Stuff gets in the way, writers move on, network bosses start to interfere or show-runners start to think they can do no wrong and end up doing little right. Middleman ended while it was still awesome and that's why it's a show everyone should watch.

( The Days )

Day 06 - Your favourite episode of your favourite TV show

I picked Hamish MacBeth as my favourite TV show, though I don't truly have a single favourite. I'll carry that through to this day and the next of the meme. So, what's my favourite Hamish MacBeth episode? There are only 20 to choose from, 19 if I count the two-part finale as one, and honestly I love them all.

But my favourite is an episode that has everything I love about the show: the quirky humour overlaying a serious message about one of the characters; Hamish being a good cop and simultaneously putting friendship and loyalty ahead of the law; and the people of Lochdubh having their own private mockery of the outsiders, who richly deserve it.

That episode is The Big Freeze. ( More details and download link under the cut )