Battlestar Galactica vs Blake’s 7

For you today, this feature originally published in Death Ray 11, that pits Battlestar Galactica against Blake’s 7 in a tussle for our affections. Features like this were Death Ray’s best feature, if you ask me.

Cheap and miserable UK TV clashes up against flashy and hopeful US goggle-fare in the battle of 1978′s SF giants…

If you like your TV SF a touch on the depressing side, then 1978 was a good year. Blake’s 7, now renowned as the most cynical of SF from a nation (and a Terry Nation) that excelled at creating flinty-hearted fables, came crashing onto the screens of the UK. Meanwhile, Battlestar Galactica, a distinctly downbeat offering for a US industry whose coin was optimism, pulled out of its Californian spacedock and fled across the stars. In one series, human free will was under threat, in the other the actual fate of the species hung by a thread. Despite production values that were, on the surface, light years apart, there was a distinct kinship in tone between these two distant transatlantic cousins. Both epitomised, in their own way, the spirits of the nation that produced them, and both created ardent fans who would campaign for years for the series’ reinstatement.

Battlestar Galactica‘s premise is now a classic: the deadly robot Cylons launch a surprise attack on the 12 Colonies of man, almost wiping out the entirety of the species. The survivors flee on the few craft remaining, under the protection of the last military ship, a Battlestar named Galactica.

Reviews for you-s (and a feature)

I’ve been up to my eyeballs in book editing and proofing (not my own, other people’s) this last week. I’m having a wee break today before I edit the final title assigned me, and thereafter commence work on my next Black Library novel (nope, I can’t tell you what it is about). As I’ve not posted any archive material for a few days, here’s three for you from early 2008:

An extensive feature on TV show Ashes to Ashes, the follow-up to genre-crossing Life on Mars. Written as the first series was launched, most of the cast are interviewed here, as is the writer and producer. Check it out.

A review of one of the Sookie Stackhouse books, Definitely Dead.

And finally, a review of the BBC’s update of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Billy Goat.

 

 

 

 

An odd dream in detail

Last night I had the weirdest dream.

Well, not the weirdest dream exactly, but pretty wierd. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to have dreams like movies, and this was one of them. Want to read about it? Here goes…

I dreamt I was in my parents’ house, which had been given to me. It’s a large, 17th century farmhouse in Wuthering Heights country, old and grey and made of stone and black oak. As I renovated it, part of it had opened up to reveal a new section I was unaware of, a bathroom cupped in a tree growing into the house. It was when my son, Benny, went into the odd little room at the top of the tree that things went a bit odd.

He started to act strangely. To cut a long story short, I discovered he’d been replaced by a fairy changeling called Mev (or something, I remembered properly when I told my wife this morning, I don’t now). My son’s face change to look a little klingony, and thus scary, but Mev was a pretty okay kind of pixie once he realised the game was up.

Why Aliens Versus Predator is terrible…

Ah, a good ranty review of the (almost) execrable AVP: Requiem. Just rereading it makes me mildly irritated. Funnily enough, this one wasn’t screened for the critics, and we had to resort to subterfuge to get a copy to review.

February of 2008 when Death Ray 11 was being written, the magazine wherefrom these pieces are plucked, must have been a splenetic month, for my review of Family Guy: Blue Harvest also seems quite damning. But then there’s New Zealand weresheep comedy Black Sheep, which I enjoyed a little more.

Ah, I remember why! None of us got paid for nearly three months, and our boss was very evasive about exactly why… A story for another time.

Reproduced in this post, for your convenience and the lessening of RSI risk, is the AVP review. Click on the links in the text for the others.

A couple of Death Ray pieces

From the vaults:

An interview with Peter Mohan, Canadian TV producer behind Mutant X, Psi Factor, Blood Ties and more.

A review of Adam Roberts’ novel Swiftly.

Why Stargate is pants

Today’s archive piece, from the “Time Trap” regular feature of Death Ray 12, sees me take out one of SF TV’s most sacred cows and shoot it in the face with a bolt of critical reason.

I’d been waiting a long time to say what I said here. Lots of people love SG, and so for years I was forced to remain silent (repeatedly demolishing one of the few truly popular SF shows of the time would have alienated a large chunk of the readership). Not lie, you understand, just not scream “Can’t you see how bad it is?” at every opportunity I had. Reviews were one of the rare places I could vent, but these were often given to fans of the show. No one on SFX or Death Ray had much time for it, to be honest.

To save the feelings of these misguided others (not least the SG cast and crew, who were generally very nice people) I tried to be reasonable in this piece, but frankly I thought the entire franchise dreadful television. If I were writing this now for this blog, it would be a lot more ranty, with more swearing. I reckon a large part of its popularity is down to the fact that there was very little SF on telly at the time, or am I being generous?

I like the film though. That counts for something, eh?

Stargate

1997 saw the beginning of what was to become the longest running SF show besides our own Doctor Who. But it was hardly groundbreaking stuff. Just why was Stargate so popular?

1994, and an SF movie called Stargate hit the screens. Meeting with middling reviews, it made a good return, but sank out of the popular consciousness with rapidity.

Stargate was yet another SF concept that drew inspiration from Von Danniken’s Chariots of the Gods, which suggests aliens were behind many of the ancient world’s technologies. A disgraced archaeologist named Daniel Jackson (James Spader), who regards the pyramids as landing platforms for alien spaceships, is recruited by the US government to help in deciphering the writing on a mysterious artefact found in 1928 in Egypt. He succeeds, and activates a wormhole to the alien world of Abydos. Jackson is sent along on a military expedition led by Colonel O’Neil (Kurt Russell) to Abydos, where an offshoot of the ancient Egyptian civilisation lives, and once there they must do battle with a parasitic alien who is worshipped as the sun god Ra.

More experiments

After some more fiddling about, I took these pictures of some Ork Nobs I painted a few months ago for my (still unfinished) nob squad. General photo lessons — more light, and a tripod. I may construct a lightbox. Still, I’m getting there.

My Waaagh! Banner nob is made up of bits from the old metal and new plastic nobs boxed sets. I need to get another light source, and a better backdrop.

One of my favourite models. I’m amazed by the versatility of some of GW’s modern kits. With this one, I sorted out the background (more or less, it’s my sofa in my office), but I still need more light. And the angle’s all screwy, as I haven’t got a tripod. Need to fix that.

A bit out of focus, and still needing more light. Although my Speed Freeks are Evil Suns in the main, I do plan to add another unit of shoota boys from the Bad Moons clan. It stands to reason that nobs from most of the ork households in a tribe would end up in the nobs mob, no matter their genetically predetermined clan affiliation. If I drop the background chunter and be honest, I actually just fancied a change from painting red!