I erred on Iron Man — the original origin stories had him in Asia, so it was the beginning of Vietnam (the movies place this in Afghanistan, of course). In 1963-4 or so, the Vietnam war wasn't fully underway yet, the big draft calls wouldn't be for another few years. (The war is seen as a signature of the 60s, but we…

Am I the only person who thinks that the original lyric wasn't all that weird? I mean it's a sarcastic jab, sure, but if anything I thought it kept the schmaltz quotient down to tolerable levels.

I get that the old "get to the moon before the communists do" is simply silly now, as is making Reed Richards a WWII veteran. (It's interesting BTW, how in the early 60s so many heroes were WWII vets. Iron Man, Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Nick Fury, to name a few, and of course Captain America, though his context is a…

Well, choosing Jessica Alba probably didn't help much either. Sometimes good actors can save a bad script, within reason. But while Michael Chiklis and Kerry Washington are good, they weren't enough to save this — a script that is poorly paced and overstuffed at the same time. Even phoned-inJack Kirby scripts would…

Re: Quincy

It's funny because I learned to count in Spanish from Sesame Street, at a time when the whole concept of Spanish-speaking television of any sort was a new one (this was in the era when cable TV was so new that anyone who had it still used those boxes with rows of buttons).

Um… if you're reviewing any media, wouldn't the politics come up a wee bit? Nathan Rabin was never shy about bringing it up. Nor were any of the slew of writers over the years.

As I said above, it's a little stereotypical, but in the context of the 70s it really worked. Certainly I felt like the Roosevelt Franklin school looked and felt a lot more like the places I knew, and I wasn't even "inner city." I think it's really hard to create something like that in "white" context and have it…

I AM old enough for Roosevelt Franklin. And I can say that one of the signature pieces that I still remember is a primer on Africa that he does for the classroom. And it is a fine breakdown of stereotypes (and it would be valuable even today, sadly enough).

Also, let's be clear. The Democrats defending seats were in conservative states that nobody would expect them to win under ordinary circumstances anyway. Freaking South Dakota? North Carolina? Really? Kentucky? Georgia is the only state in the south to get more Republican post 2008, and the fact that Nunn could make…

One of he issues that people who don't know much aout sailing forget is that the amount of water you can carry on your boat puts pretty strict limits on the sailing distance.

That's why the Doctor's ambivalence to soldiers, I think (and I would bet you would agree) at first had me thinking that the writers were getting lazy. It was better when they emphasized that the Doctor's issues had as much to do with how soldiers are taught to think about their world, as it was with them being…

Speaking of historical myths…. In the 1960s the fundamental premise of the anti-Vietnam protesterswas that they and their friends shouldn't die. The biggest protests were not at Harvard, Columbia and Yale where the wealthy kids were unlikely to get drafted at all (schools like that being expensive even then). The…

Point I was making was that the idea of the kind of government we have in the US wasn't anywhere near as far-fetched as a government for the whole world, then or now. (It's also instructive that relatively few nations have opted for the federal system and legislative/executive setup like ours — it certainly doesn't…

Point taken. I'd forgotten about Donna when I was writing that, and Donna is actually a companion I like a lot better. I always felt what was done with that character was a real disservice. Donna was such a good choice because she brought a much more "ordinary person" sensibility to the companion role — she wasn't…

Well, there are some important differences there. The American Revolution took place in an area that was a piece of the UK, though the term UK was still quite new at that point. The differences — liguistic and cultural — between the states weren't all that great. The system invented in the US wasn't all that new,…

Interesting that you bring that up, because those of us old enough to remember the Cold War could see UNIT as a kind of bridge between warring factions, one of the few things the USSR and US could agree on. On top of that, the idea of the UK or Europe, more broadly, being more important and remaining that way made a…

A sonic screwdriver vibrator sounds like something I'd see at that shop on 8th avenue and 44th.

Bodies less than 50 years old are pretty well-preserved. You'd be amazed what a dry environment (like that inside a coffin) can do for preservation. Plus a ton of formalin and god-knows-what-else they use to preserve people for funerals. Connective tissue is pretty tough. (Ever break down a chicken for frying?) Even…

Haven't plowed through the whole nine yards of comments, so forgive me if this stuff has been addressed already…