Right, the "Oh, you're from the 20th century? Settle a bet, did you ever by any chance notice a homosexual subtext between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock? Whoops, never mind, gotta keep saving the world" bit.

I checked up on him from time to time since I stopped listening to him around the turn of the century (I so love being able to say that). In the last few years, he seems to have returned to his old style. I think I read an interview or article or something that implied he was embarrassed by how he was so totally taken…

Drood was pretty forgettable for me, possibly for the lame twist ending. I also liked Black Hills (except all the blow jobs), which no one has mentioned here yet.

From what I've heard from people in the book-industry, the cost of the physical book is a surprisingly small amount of the cover price, especially at the volumes they deal in. Shipping is apparently the major cost, given the process for pulping unsold books (cut off the covers to send them as proof of destruction to…

The sketch artist scene reminds me of another common thing. I've heard actors and other famous people tell dozens of stories about people meeting them on the street and saying, "Hey, you look kind of like [you!]" Or, even better, when they lose a costume or look-alike contest competing as themselves.

Clark didn't specifically tell Lana about his powers in the show (just that he felt "different"), but he did use them right in front of her (in the pilot, he hears a car crash on the other side of town while he's talking to her, and then breaks into a super-run to get there, and by the time she catches up, he's just…

I believe the name was Luminous (possibly with a stupider spelling) but, no. Luminous was pretty stupid, and epitomizes "throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks" much more than this one. I prefer "Target" to the sequel episode. That was seriously the best thing they can think of to riff on "Look, up in the…

They certainly tried, combining every pseudo-scientific rationale for Superman's abilities into one mish-mash, punctuated by "And, hey, a lot of other weird shit might happen, too! What do I look like, a computer reconstruction of a brilliant scientist or something?" for the really tough stuff like heat vision and…

There actually is a drawing where they considered having Picard's right arm made up to suggest it's a prosthetic. Pity they didn't go through with it. It could've been the Colonel Tigh's eyepatch of TNG.

In cross-cutting like that (especially in this case), I wonder if there's more stuff in the message that we didn't see. The "Finally" leading into his last sentence implies there is.

@avclub-fd172dda9796767557675385e915cab4:disqus I don't think the secrecy is because they don't think the younger races would take it well. The Vorlons were just as impenetrable. It's not like there was a big, yellow and green-spotted organic Babylon station where the galactic government could be set up. Both sides…

I also twigged on the "just horrible" thing, remembering Morden's backstory from the supplemental material. Granted, that was written after Z'ha'dum, and JMS has said that his initial idea of Morden's background was different from what Jeanne Cavelos ended up doing (the original concept was that Morden was a…

@avclub-573185e7a57bcdcd68d7895cf83ffe66:disqus I loved in the commentaries where, IIRC, Tudyk points out that Inara uses the same patter with every single person who needs a pep talk. "A companion chooses her clients. I'm obviously all that and a bag of chips, so if I picked you, you must be awesome by the transitive…

Well, at that moment, Sheridan is about two years away from dying, and their son has just been kidnapped because of how the Shadow War ended. It's a moment when Delenn would be primed to have a moment of weakness and consider rolling the dice for a world where her son doesn't have a Shadow Keeper and her husband…

They've been at it for a very long time. It's entirely possible that they've been stuck in their own echo chamber for some many thousands of years that they don't realize that the other half has their own good reasons for valuing what they do.

@avclub-d72f705337e5adcf7e33ec0381c5f5b2:disqus The Technomage Trilogy spins off from The Shadow Within and Anna is a recurring character. For the first two books, she's having a grand old time flying around and blowing shit up as a giant spaceship, but in the last one, there's a subplot where Morden and Justin try to…

Dollhouse is probably a bad comparison, because it was also unnaturally rushed and showed it.

Because of what Ivanova says when she deduces that, as Sheridan is the Vorlons' hand, the man in-between must be the Shadows' hand (and the accompanying image from the dream of Sheridan looking up at an evil, scary Sheridan on a balcony).

They actually reshot the entire Anna scene from "Revelations" for Z'ha'dum, not just the little bit they slipped into the previously-on segment. JMS made some noise about possibly reediting "Revelations" with Gilbert for the reruns and home video, but it never happened. I'm speculating, but I figure it was either…

Speaking of, for the longest time, I thought that was just a colored data crystal, like in that one episode of Crusade. I didn't realize that it was blood. I suppose you can fanwank it that Centauri blood doesn't turn dark and brown when it isn't fresh but it seems uncharacteristically sloppy of the props department…