So where the hell WAS Biggles when you needed him last Saturday?

This series is definitely the direct extension of Unfinished Tales, so if you enjoyed that I think you'll be on solid ground. Best of luck from one terminal nerd to another. :)

Actually I've made a list of the best bits, for reference for myself and others. If you're interested, I'll just copy and paste it:

When is this story taking place, exactly? The Dwarven ones are all accounted for, unless we deny that the four Sauron didn't reclaim were consumed by dragons. I would think it would be more likely for it to be one of the lesser rings, such as Gandalf originally thought Bilbo's might be.

There's a passage in this book where Tolkien points out that whereas Sauron's power was bound up in a particular and finite bit of gold, Morgoth's was spread throughout GOLD ITSELF. And all of everything else, too. Awesome stuff. :D

I have a hard copy, but I just Googled it and it turns out it is available online as well! This particular volume has a lot of great stuff, but the sections on Orcs begin on page 430: http://www.e-reading.ws/boo…

I don't know anything about this game, but I do know Orcs. I figured I'd make a recommendation for anyone interested in what Tolkien himself wrote about their metaphysical/social/biological status. See Christopher Tolkien's The History of Middle Earth Vol. X: Morgoth's Ring Section 5: Myths Transformed. It contains…

It's good to know that it's been addressed in some capacity, at least.

Oops, my mistake.

Zack doesn't like giving grades, and as far as I understand that's the only reason his Star Trek reviews didn't have any after the first couple of seasons of TNG. I guess for Classic reviews, at least, it's up to the writer.

Which was probably hilarious at the time because how could someone kill that many people all at once, amiright? But today, it made me cringe (despite being also very funny) because it in fact happens all the time.

I should save this thought, but oh well. Life of Brian has never landed for me, and on my most recent viewing a few months ago I think I figured out that its conventionality is the biggest reason. It plods along as a kind of half-jokey but basically normal story, and I keep waiting for Pythonian humor but only…

Mostly anything by Martin Scorcese. His directorial vision and his technical ability to realize that vision are obvious, but I find his aesthetic choices annoying, and his choices of stories equally annoying and almost always banal.

Oh, yes, indeed. And I made a mistake, I like Final Mission. I confused it at first with Journey's End. Final Mission=good, Journey's End=bad.

Fair enough! I'm just glad to have some Trek talk going on now that Classic Trek reviews are over.

I think Broccoli knows the actual production backstory there, he was just ret-conning creatively to provide an in-universe explanation. :)

Wait, I don't understand. Do people NOT like The First Duty, as a rule? I must have missed that bit of bizzarreness during Zack's TNG reviews. It's not an all-time great, but it's very solid and certainly above average.

*Jake staring into space*

Another Thursday. Another reminder that what was once the highlight of my day is no longer a thing. Any chance of a temporal rift that will take us back to the beginning of Classic Trek reviews?

Fair enough. It is the kind of thing that expanded universe novels tend to like. (I was a Star Wars expanded universe guy growing up, even though I'm a Trek guy when it comes to the primary canon.)