You are wrong. "Istari" is the Elvish word for "Wizard"; Wizards are on the White Council, but so are powerful Elf lords.

No, no not Kara Thrace. Apart from the fact that that plotline was ridiculous, it doesn't really apply; in the final version, they said Kara was an Angel or something but even she did not know what the heck she was - I believe you remember her agonizing over this.

"Wizards" in Tolkien's legendarium are not human beings. It specifically refers to a small group of only five beings. They are basically incarnate Angels that have descended into human form; they *have* no families. How can Gandalf have a biological cousin when Gandalf has no parents? (in a loose sense Eru…

He described him as his "cousin" to Beorn, but I always took that as in the sense of "kinsman" — i.e. they're both basically "incarnate angels" who have descended into human form (thus, sort of "kinsman", or "children of the men of god", etc.)

Oh dear god I think they're going to kill Radagast; thus Gandalf gets his staff. This would be to explain why he isn't in the LOTR trilogy. My HOPE is that instead, they just have Radagast more or less do what happened in the books; decide that this warfare has harmed the forest too much, and even if they "won" the…

People I know who write fanfiction told me they felt deeply hurt by this column, as if it was mocking all fanfiction by picking the worst of examples.

This is why Mammals have DNA methylization and epigenetic inheritance; a "genetic arms race" between rival parents. This in turn is why you can't just splice together the DNA of same-sex couples to produce a healthy embryo; mammalian DNA needs both a mother and a father.

He doesn't want to outrun the lion, just outrun the rest of us.

While tight lipped about it, much, much later Eccleston teased out a bit of why he left, and it was basically "toxic work environment" (combined with that he didn't want to be pidgeonholed in one role).....but from his hints....it seems he faced a lot of discrimination on set for being from Northern England. The…

It removed the extreme Anarchy vs Fascism theme.

It is better to rule on Mira Island, than to serve on Tasmania.

It would be interesting to return to that island in 100 years and learn what crop had sprung from the seed planted today.

Yes, more "sense" — which at the same time doesn't make them just moustache-twirling villains. They wanted terraforming tech, and brought along some extra soldiers to protect their interests....but they're not played as outright villains (even in the movie-version, the extra soldiers aren't evil or anything).

Small correction: Shaw is outright implanted with a chestburster, not a hybrid (which I thought was a better, more twisted idea). She's in the medi-pod just as its going off, so she sort of half-chestbursts, half-gets it removed....basically its surgically removed but its so mature that it does a LOT of damage on…

Overall, Spaihts script was better. A few minor changes such as character moments (pushups, barfing) were good, but who's to say that a later, refined draft of Spaihts' wouldn't do the same thing? The only major change that HELPED was making David less of an outright villain, and more morally ambiguous (the worst…

I've replied on this subject before (and I hope you read/enjoyed/remembered my churlish ranting, Charlie, if I made at least some salient points).... I've narrowed down "what went wrong with BSG" to 5 points:

these aren't embiggenable.

You know instead of calling it just the "Emergency Tumblr" you could be cool and call it the "Battle Bridge" like on Next Generation.

Singer *created* the X-Men movie-verse....his absence is what derailed it in X-Men 3. His presence on it in First Class revitalized it. My hope is that there is no love lost, and Vaughn will indeed switch around to still be in the producer's chair and attached to the film. But more Singer = good news.

Maybe it just has flashbacks to earlier in his life before he got the adamantium.