It’s been a few weeks months since I’ve written one of these. Partly it’s because I’ve been busy, partly because I’ve been watching reruns, and partly because I honestly hadn’t figured out what to write about Altered Carbon. I’m going to try.

A serious pet peeve of mine is the Hollywood notion that “there are no good fathers”.

I missed a week of HTC because life has been busy, and it’s been very difficult to get through 3 episodes of this show. It hasn’t been difficult because life’s been busy, though. Read on to find out why.

A discussion about Hannah John-Kamen’s roll in Ant-Man & the Wasp lead to myself and others mentioning her 2 3 seasons as the lead in Killjoys[1]. Which lead to a request for an HTC on Killjoys. So... by demand, here it is.

Cloak & Dagger is the latest Marvel show to be released on “regular TV” (as opposed to online). It’s being marketed for the “young adult” demographic[1]—though I’d argue it’s skewing more towards the “new adult” demographic[1]. I’m at the half-century mark, and I’m going to critique the show

Originally, I had intended for Cloak & Dagger to be the first Hat Trick Critique I did. However, I forgot that Season 2 of Luke Cage came out this week. Given my reactions to many other second seasons of shows I liked, I decided that this might be a better ice-breaker.

In old-school (very old-school) computing, there was a rule of thumb: “Tell me three times” (famously used by Heinlein in regards to Gay Deceiver’s AI). In sports, we talk about the “hat trick”—succeeding at something three times (usually in a row). And personally, I (try to) give a show 3 episodes to capture my…

It’s been a while since I’ve done a “Project Lazarus” post. And those have all talked about ways to reboot old shows—usually from the 80s—in a more modern context. This time, however, I’d like to take a different approach: Legacy.

I have a degree in theatre. It’s on the tech side, but I still spent a lot of time doing acting, dance, costuming, and everything else. One of the things that was hammered into us by our acting and directing profs was how to make things look “real”. Verisimilitude. It doesn’t have to be real, but it should look real.

I’m willing to ignore and accept a lot of things in TV shows and movies—because it moves the plot along, because reality is impractical, or because it’s a theatrical convention (short-hand that we all understand). One of my pet peeves, however, is how often the flag is hung wrong.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) starts this week. Some people may have the desire to join in, but lack ideas as to what to write. So I am, once again, presenting Trilobyte Studios: A source of open-source entertainment—write all the stories you want without worrying about letters from corporate lawyers.

This is the face of the Federation?

I’m going through my drafts folder and trying to clear it out. I’ve a few posts I wrote a while ago that might not be topical anymore, but (I think) are still worth publishing.

The recent death of Martin Landau, and the mad mess that Star Trek: Discovery looks like it’s going to be, got this percolating in the back of my brain.

A few years ago, this guy by the name of Aristotle wrote a book called “Poetics”. Oddly enough, it wasn’t about poets, or poetry, or even Edgar Allen Poe. It was, instead, about the nature of storytelling and theatre, and the power they have to make us better people.

We are now 3 episodes—3 hours—into “American Gods”. That’s the equivalent of 4 episodes of a network TV show, one and a half feature movies, or 80% of the Fellowship of the Ring. And we have zero plot.

Last week, I offered up to the creative public all the worlds which I have created. The response was... underwhelming. But that’s okay. It’s a crazy idea out of left field and I don’t expect people to jump on the bandwagon for no reason. So, I’m going to suggest some.