Oddball Update

This is it, dudes. The last day of work for this week. It’s actually drizzling and nasty here in southwest Florida today; the skies are gray and it’s quite dismal outside, but I’m quite pleased—the long weekend officially starts tonight, as far as I’m concerned! I’m picking up some take-out for dinner, watching Babylon 5, playing DOA Volleyball, basically having a fine time.

This morning at the office, the account managers surprised me with a gift of appreciation for all the help I give them each day as they go about their jobs. They collectively got me some gift certificates to a couple of local restaurants, which is always a great idea. I know the money’s tight this month but I’m definitely going to do something for them too, even if I just pick up cards for each of them. I’ll probably call it a New Year’s present. Actually most of the account managers like to celebrate the New Year more than Christmas so it might be more apropos anyhow.

So last night my wife hung around while I was playing DOA Volleyball on the Xbox and we basically laughed ourselves silly over it, especially when she started imitating the girls’ mousey voices as they batted the ball around. I think my wife finds it somewhat entertaining because of the fashion aspect, in the sense that you mix and match bikinis, shoes, sunglasses and other beachwear. Using the Xbox’s custom soundtrack feature, I’ve added some J-pop songs to the game, which couldn’t be more appropriate.

During last night’s dinner I watched the Babylon 5 2-hour pilot movie, entitled “The Gathering.” This is the 1998 re-edit that the creators did, which improved the flow of the story dramatically. Having only seen the original 1993 airing, I have to say that the re-edit did wonders for the thing. The original edit was boring, boring, boring. If they’d aired the re-edit in ‘93, I daresay I might have been prompted to tune in and watch the series that followed. However, that said, I still wasn’t blown away by the movie, and here’s why.

People often put Star Trek and Bab5 up against each other in a battle of creative worthiness. While the Bab5 creators put a ton of work into the concept and story up front—way more than most TV series get before their first episode is even filmed—I think the series suffers from an anachronistic sort of situation that dates it much more heavily than series like, say, Star Trek TNG or DS9 date themselves. Looking at DS9, you have no idea that it was done in the early nineties. Looking at TNG, for the most part it never screams “EIGHTIES!” at you (except with certain actress’ hair in the first season, but that’s another story). But Bab5 just feels dated. No, not just because the CGI is really rudimentary and amateur looking (although it was pretty revolutionary for the time). It’s the costumes, the hair, the character stereotypes, I don’t know…it almost makes me feel like I’m watching TekWar or some bad USA Network sci-fi cobble-together. Granted, Bab5’s pilot budget was $3.5 million, whereas the vastly superior-looking Star Trek Voyager pilot—shot only a year after Bab5’s—was budgeted a ridiculous $25 million. That’s what being part of a mega-franchise can do for you, I guess.

But for all that, I thought the plot of “The Gathering” was intriguing and I can see that there is a ton of setup here for all kinds of events to unfold over the next few seasons’ worth of shows. I’m certainly going to watch the first four episodes of Bab5 season one, which I also have on loan from Netflix at the moment. The whole show is a real character story, and it’ll be interesting to see how certain characters evolve. On Star Trek, there’s not much character evolution. I mean, look at Enterprise, now in its fourth season. How have any of the characters on that show truly evolved since the pilot? Okay, maybe Archer got pissed for a year. That’s not evolution. Maybe CRACK WHORE—er, T’Pol—started doing drugs and shedding tears. Is that evolution? Maybe. Micro-evolutions of character took place over various arcs in season three, but none of their effects have radically changed the very fabric of the show. Now, if Archer, say, rebelled against the Federation and went rogue for an entire season, now that would be some character evolution. But you can’t just do that; his character needs a logical motivation as well, or it just comes off as a hackneyed ratings grab—like most of what Enterprise has done this season.

Babylon 5, on the other hand, has an entirely different feel to it. The creators didn’t have all kinds of money to kick around. But they also didn’t have an entire franchise worth of history to tie into, live up to, or write their stories around. While financially limited, their creative freedom—the freedom to do something totally fresh—allowed them to stay true to their creative intentions, to write the stories they wanted to write, at least to whatever degree the TNT executives would allow. (Can you believe that TNT was the original network of Bab5? I can’t even imagine that channel playing anything original anymore. All they can do is show the same “new release” drama films back to back for 48 hours every week. And Law & Order, which I can’t fault them for.)

Anyway, while the Bab5 pilot seemed a bit cheesy on the surface, it’s not like I haven’t enjoyed the hell out of cheesy sci-fi before…I mean, Star Trek TOS and Doctor Who are two of my faves, and that’s some major cheese right there. And there were some changes made between the pilot and the series which I have yet to witness for myself, so I’m expecting further improvement by tonight’s episode. Most of the changes involved the cast, which is good because the cast members I HATED the most actually quit their jobs and were recast. One of them was the woman who played Laurel Takashima, who I really, honest and truly wanted to like, but who couldn’t deliver a line with any more sincerity than an intoxicated blowfish. She sounded like she was reading a cue card in almost every scene. If she had to read her lines with an air of panic, anxiety or fright, it never failed to sound incredibly phony and forced. I got past all the other surface cheesiness of the movie, but just couldn’t get past her. At least she didn’t come back for the series itself.

It’s now 10:32 a.m. I want to leave. There is nothing happening today, nothing to do, nothing going on. The CEO is here, but I’m not exactly sure what he’s doing. Half of development is gone, all of management (save the CEO) is gone, and the rest of us are basically twiddling our thumbs. Down at the other end of the floor, somebody’s on the phone with Dell or some company that’s playing really goofy-sounding sixties lounge music on hold, and they’ve been on hold for an hour—on the speakerphone. Ah well, I just pretend somebody’s playing NOLF down there.

Okay, I just scuttled off to do some actual work and now it’s 11:19 a.m. Can you feel the love? Hell, I’m going to put the lid on this post until I have something better to say.

Categorized as Life