@avclub-a9b08c6e5802aa231f08eaf9949f5294:disqus I was going to chime in with a Vollmae nod, as well. That's also a performance that I could entirely understand someone hating, but which kinds works for me. The only real negative note is that she is ostensibly just an elite member of the same culture (and, I'm pretty…

I know the quote isn't from this episode, but the title brought it up: I'm always on the lookout for opportunities to use "Plisness… or bleasure." 

It's all about the points!

There are so many obituary comments on this site to which that line should be appended.

Whee-yow!

As much as I would want to cut them some slack because I love the show, I was watched on my old regular DVDs, and CGI Rygel still looks pretty awful. I'll actually give them credit for decent animation — he moves in a nicely Rygellian way — but the actual rendering is unconvincing, to say the least.

Prompted by the start of the reviews, I ended up rewatching all of season 1 last week, and the one thing that really struck me was how capable pretty much all the main characters are. They make a point of saying explicitly in a later episode that there is no captain on Moya — and that's really true. You can easily…

One relatively big plot hole in "I, ET," is the language. After very nicely dealing with the language problem in the pilot by introducing the translator microbes, we end up with the cast on a strange isolated planet that shouldn't have any reason to have translator microbes in its population, and yet there's no…

Oh, you will totally be able to watch the whole thing a second time — and you'll pick up on so much more. Then you can join us old Home Movies pros and reminisce proper about the first time you saw each episode.

I mentioned this in an earlier comment, but I think if you see the screeching part of the theme as basically a parody of the more mellow vocals in the original Star Trek theme it "works" a lot better.

"Lon's legs are made of wood, but his feet are real!"

@avclub-ffc905126015cdc6758873970fb59828:disqus Contrariwise, I'd say that a "true" adaptation (scare quotes absolutely required I would think) would have "fidelity" to its source as one of its primary characteristics (especially if you're talking about adaptation across forms or media). A work that's just doing its…

@avclub-570170146218082d2ca2544d57a48f1e:disqus That would be the Tale of Audun (Audunar Thattur), which is a great little short story.

Olaf Peacock, Gunnlaugr Serpentstongue, Aud the Deep-Minded…

@avclub-708ad56a59dc3b0cb49bcda2363d2824:disqus I second the big Penguin volume. Oddly, it uses some different translations than in other Penguin volumes, but usually for the better (I slightly prefer the Terry Gunnell translation of Hranfkel in the big anthology, for example, over the Palsson translation in the…

Wasn't the movie "Pathfinder" pretty much exactly that (I know I watched it, but I don't really remember it)?

Anyone who enjoys Cormac McCarthy or similar sorts of modern fiction really ought to read Hrafnkel's Saga (especially since you can finish the whole thing in an afternoon).

I was going to make the same point. A miniseries really inspired by the sagas would begin with an incident of brutal violence, and then spend the next six episodes in courtroom wrangling. And then it would conclude with another act of brutal violence that either enforces the verdict or supercedes it.

Why do you think they're called Celestials?

I was actually going to mention Auerbach, in response to the notion that there should be a Wire-like biblical miniseries that fleshes out all the psychological and political complexities. It's too much to really try to summarize, but Auerbach makes a rather compelling argument that the strength of the Old Testament…