You know I completely forgot about the “recent” syndicated series. Guess it’s because I grew up on the Guy Williams ZORRO tv series (even though, to be honest, I always thought The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh was even cooler than Zorro). :)

I don’t know. It’s not like Hollywood is just getting around to making Zorro movies. :)

Heck, Batman and Superman both lifted their whole secret-identity schtick from Zorro . . . who lifted it from The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Exactly. Hollywood has been making ZORRO movies since 1920 (Hello, Douglas Fairbanks!), so why expect them to stop making them now?

Every generation deserves its own Zorro.

(And, yes, I’ve committed ZORRO on occasion, too.)

I feel compelled to point out that no less than four of the old movies being hyped here—The Pit and the Pendulum, The Comedy of Terrors, Master of the World AND The Incredible Shrinking Man were all written by the late Richard Matheson.

Meanwhile, why is WYNNONA EARP relegated to “Also on Friday”? It’s a brand-new…

“How’s the cake?”.

“Not moist enough, I’m afraid.”

Honestly, I don’t get the aversion. “Moist” is a perfectly useful word that doesn’t carry any negative connotations to me.

Oops. I meant “plausible deniability,” not “plausibility,” but I guess it’s too late to edit my post.

Well, they still had to maintain a veneer of plausibility even in “Crusader.”. There are no overt love scenes in the episode, nobody kisses anybody, making it possible to pretend that Najira just wants to be Gabby’s new best friend and champion, even as jealousy and competition over Gabby drives the entire episode.

Another “smoking-gun” episode is “Crusader,” which pretty much makes no dramatic sense whatsoever unless you read it as a romantic triangle in which another warrior woman tries to “steal” Gabby from Xena.

I mean, sure, taking the story at face value, you CAN interpret it as Najira simply trying to poach Xena’s…

It’s funny. With all due respect to the authors and editors involved, the “official” XENA tie-in novels never really took off the way, say, that the BUFFY or STAR TREK novels did. I suspect this is because, unlike XENA fanfic, the authorized novels had to steer clear of what the fan base really wanted.

Usually, fan…

Well, to be fair, it WAS a fun. swashbuckling fantasy adventure series with a lot of kid appeal,just like the classic “sword-and-sandal” fantasy flicks that inspired it. XENA, like HERCULES, was never supposed to be “for mature audiences only.” It was pure Saturday matinee action and adventure, complete with monsters,…

Well, while you’re at Amazon . . ..:) .

I wasn’t talking about THAT episode. “Married with Fishsticks” is the “Spock’s Brain” of XENA and must never be spoken of. :)

I was thinking of the bit in “Altared States” where we get some teasing off-screen dialogue along the lines of:

“Don’t be nervous. Just reach out and grab it.”

“But it’s so wet and slippery . .…

Naming “A Day int the Life” the best thing ever is a perfectly defensible position. :)

They actually used that “sleeping beauty” pic as the interior art on one of the XENA soundtrack albums.

I think there was also a (mistaken) perception on the part of the studio that XENA was a kid’s show. It aired on weekend afternoons in many markets, featured monsters and sword fights and campy humor, was a spin-off from HERCULES, etc. So maybe they were concerned that the “subtext” would make it harder to market XENA…

Heck, the innuendo started as early as Season One. Just check out the “fishing” sequence in “Altared States” or the bit in the same ep where a stoned Gabby starts making goo-goo eyes at Xena.

That was when I first realized that “By the gods, they’re doing this on purpose!”

And then, of course, there’s “A Day in the…

Speaking of hopping channels, let’s not forget that the original WONDER WOMAN tv series debuted on ABC before jumping to CBS, who switched the setting from World War II to the present-day to cut down on production costs.

The more things change . . . .

It depends. There are lots of different flavors of Trek and some of them have sold better than others at various points. (At its height, TNG books sold better than TOS or DS9 books, for example.) But Pocket is still publishing at least twelve new Trek books a year, and they still hit the New York Times Bestseller List…

Sadly, I fear that Paula the Ape Woman will be overlooked somehow . . . :)