Monthly Archives: July 2018

Since I knew this would be a long post I have been nibbling away at it for a few days now. It seems now that things have changed.

Originally I heard that there was to be a Buffy reboot – it now seems that it will be a continuation rather than a reboot. You can read about it here. All I can say to that is ‘Woohoo.’ I am so glad that the reports were wrong. Nevertheless I am not going to let my work go to waste. So anyway here is the post I have been working on. I wonder what the new series will be like.

The other day I heard that they are going to reboot Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My response was quick and concise ‘For the love of God why?’

I am sick of reboots. Battlestar Galactica was a good reboot. However there is a big difference in rebooting a cancelled show from the 1970s compared to Buffy which was a success. I am forced to wonder if Hollywood has either run out of ideas or if they are so afraid of failure that they are not prepared to try anything new.

There was TV series in the 1960s called My Mother the Car. I have never seen it and it was probably awful but they tried and heck it got made. Taking changes may lead to duds but it may also lead to great things. Doctor Who was first made, in part, to fill a gap in the schedules and ran from 1966-1989 in its first run. People took chances back then and now almost all media is either a prequel, reboot, sequence, or adapted from a book.

Apropos of nothing Incredibles 2 was great.

Why reboot Buffy? I could understand rebooting something like Blake’s 7. It was a good show but made on a nothing budget and looks so dated today. Although improving Avon would be tough.

However Buffy stands up very well, ran for seven seasons, and in my opinion had very few bad episodes. There are a couple of clunkers in season 1 but even Go Fish is a bit of candy episode (A term coined by TPN on You Tube. A better way of saying guilty pleasure) for me. Although I can’t disagree with anything he says here:

I Robot you ,Jane introduces Jenny Calendar – no link as page is spoilerific! I don’t think I would skip any episodes. And there are not many series I can say that about.

So here are seven ideas that are better than a reboot – beyond the obvious of maybe actually, and you can call me crazy for this, ACTUALITY COMING UP WITH SOMETHING NEW.

Number 1 – Make Ripper

This is the most obvious one as it was a proposed series years ago. If Antony Head was available he could narrate. We could see early Giles and see how he went from a rather dangerous young man to the man we know as Buffy’s mentor.

Number 2 – The Watcher’s Council.

How about a series focusing on the Watchers? We could see the history of the council perhaps in an anthology series – with some framing device to hold it all together. From before its creation, maybe some background about the first slayer, up till the death of the slayer before Buffy. We are taking a couple of thousand years lots of stories.

Number 3 – Quentin Travers

This one is a little out their but why not explore this character. He is a believer in the ends justifying the means, and the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. It would be interesting to see who he was. From how he was first told about vampires to how he became the man we saw in Buffy. We could delve a little deeper into the test given to Buffy In Helpless – how and when it was decided it was needed.

Number 4 – Go somewhere else.

This is a general one I’ll be more specific in the next three. After Buffy we have hundreds of slayers. Make a series that can run alongside the comics. There are around 200 countries in the world it could be anywhere. Even if only in the US there are lots of possibilities. What about in the Arctic Circle? Haft the year it is always night. What would vampires do there?

 

 

Number 5 – Africa

Set the series in Africa. Make the slayer be from a poor background. It would be an opportunity to tell new stories. Maybe delve in to the mythology of African nations to influence the story. Doing this would, I think, would be interesting. Rather than having a Slayer living in a typical American town we would have an African village and the day to day problems would be more interesting because the Slayer’s life would be so different to what most of the views know. Also remember that Kendra was from a place that understood what it was to be a slayer.

Sidebar – I am mindful of the need for diversity in fiction. But I don’t really think much is gained just by having Black Buffy – make her her own person.

Number 6 – Mars.

Take the story somewhere unexpected. There was a comic about a slayer in the 23 century so this might step on the toes of that but here is the basic idea.

It is the 25th century and Mars has been terraformed but much of it is still being explored. They one of the people working on the building of a new city is found dead – vampire. And on Mars there are not supppsed to be any.

In this time period the slayers are known to the world, like the CIA, MI6, so a Slayer team is sent to investigate. They discover a Hellmouth on Mars and the series goes from there.

Number 7 – Firefly

This may seem like a bit of a non sequitur but Firefly is another Joss Whedon program. It and the subsequent film were very good. Firefly didn’t get a chance to develop and grow. Rebooting this would make sense. And I know it would have an audience.

These are just a few ides I had. As I said at the top it looks like we are now getting an actual new show. So my frustration has been transformed into quiet optimism.

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I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.

Exercising is far easier when you’re watching something. Yeah it is not going to lead me to me Mr Muscle but it is better to exercise and watch than never to exercise at all. Shakespeare said that didn’t he?

I may have undone some of the work by the Chai latte and the Indian meal and in the evening I had a party to go to. I brought doughnuts which few people seemed to want. There were 8 or so left – so I gave them away. The woman I gave them to does a lot of sport, and goes to the gym a lot more, so she can justify a doughnut in a way my flabby gut cannot!

I was watching the TOS episode Charlie X while on the treadmill. I am still yet to get to any really good episodes. This episode was odd.

A young boy is brought aboard the Enterprise and is quickly shown to have superpowers. He can make crewmen disappear, mutilate them, melt chess pieces, and do card tricks.

Charlie has been isolated from humans for his whole life and so it is quite a learning curve for him to adjust to life in society. And we see what a child might do if presented with great power.

The ending is problematic as it is a desus ex machiina. The Enterprise was only saved because the aliens bailed them out. At least the existence of the aliens was at least telegraphed earlier in the show.

Gender has to again be talked about here. Yeoman Rand was the first woman Charlie had ever seen.

It is natural that he would feel drawn to her.  Given his age sex education is vital to his development. Unfortunately he is on a ship from the 1960s. Meaning that Kirk, McCoy, and even Spock seem incapable of explaining these matters to him.

As this was the 1960s there was no way for the writer’s to talk about sex. In a later episode, Wink of an Eye, Kirk is seen putting on his boots while a woman brushes her hair behind him. And this was considered to have been getting something passed the sensors. I think though they could have at least suggested that Charlie had received that education. Maybe even that was too much for the time.

There is also the problematic thing of Rand being called a girl. I’ll discuss that in The Lights of Zetar as it becomes more relevant in that one.

Over all this is a below average entry in the series. Admittedly most of my issues with it steam from my modern view point but still I don’t think it is one of the best. The next one features God-like powers too.

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I talked about Morning Pages the other week and am still sticking with it. So far I have managed to remember and not left it till after midnight as has happened to me when writing a paper diary.

My mind is such a jumble of thoughts and ideas. There is too much and I am tired more than I should be – so it seems to me.

I would hate to be one of those British people who complains about the weather but it is rather stuffy because of it.

When I get like this it is like the ideas in my mind are blocked as if by a force field and I just have to write my way out of the hole.

It is early afternoon and there is still enough time to go for a walk which I think I will do in a little while.

The human brain is so complex it is difficult to understand. And my own mind is the most perplexing to me. Why do I get nervous about things that should be reasons to relax? Why do I have to turn the door knob several times to make sure it is locked? Why do I feel incapable of going agaist my to-do list?

The other day at work I was having a bad day. Several people noticed it. They asked what was wrong. There is no answer. My brain is like a dripping tap. Every now and then it gets to overflowing. On that day I feel terrible. Then the water goes and I feel ok but it starts again.

I may be repeating myself a bit here but I want to get out my thoughts – even in a public place. I want to understand why I have these patterns. I don’t imagine that happening I just have to do it and try and look at it from the outside: ‘Today is a bad day – tomorrow will be better.’ That is the idea. Tomorrow never dies though and sometimes it feels like a long time coming.

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I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.

I went to the gym again today and last Thursday. I didn’t meet my target of ten times in June but at least I went six times!

On Thursday, whilst on the treadmill, I watched The Man Trap. It is a far more Trek-like Star Trek episode than The Cage.

We have all the main characters apart from Scotty. No Chekhov either but that character wasn’t on the show yet. We have the familiar colourful uniforms. And we have crew members being killed by the monster of the week. Although none of them were wearing red.

The captain’s logs are used strangely in this episode. Kirk gives information from the future:

Captain’s log, additional entry. Since our mission was routine, we had beamed down to the planet without suspicion. We were totally unaware that each member of the landing party was seeing a different woman, a different Nancy Crater.

I believe this type of thing is done in later episodes but it still struck me as odd. Especially as Crewman Darnell was dead before he had a chance to report what he had seen.

I like the creature in this episode. I think that it still stands up pretty well. As Seven would say: ‘Crude but effective.’

One thing about TOS that always bugs me is the treatment of women. The uniforms for one thing. They look nice for a night out but are silly for a military uniform. Starfleet is a military I don’t care what Gene says. In this episode I did see women in trousers. Run for the hills it is the end of civilisation! I wish they had gone with that. Although, with the presence of both, it could be argued that women can choose.

More troubling though is the way male crewmen react to women. They talk like young men without a sense of decorum. A crewman looks at Yeoman Rand and says: ‘Yeah, how’d you like to have her as your own personal yeoman.’ 

I know I am putting 2018 thinking into a 1960s show but Star Trek is, or at least it likes to think it is, a progressive show. And it is odd how much sexism there is in it. In some ways TNG went too far in the other direction. In that show the characters can be arrogant about how far humans have come. It makes me wonder how bad it was for women back in the 1960s – and makes me hope that things have improved.

Overall this was a nice introduction to the series. A creature roaming the ship and killing the crew seems, at least to me, very Star Trek. Star Trek didn’t get the reputation for lots of dead crewmen for nothing.

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I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.