“my coffee tray isn’t opening. The little tray. That comes out. That I put my coffee mug on. Its. Not. Opening.”

I would watch an entire episode of Merlyn and Darhk getting dinner. They would bitch and snipe about where to go, who has to pay, how long the wait is and it’d be delightful the whole time.

J. Firestone’s shows are generally terrible, somewhat fun and terrible; La Femme Nikita is the only above-decent one. To be fair, M-X got a little better after the first season.

Nowadays, several people seem to enjoy Dark Matter, another of Firestone’s, but I find it to be “the poor man ’s Farscape”: it is as though…

Thank you! I read that sentence about 15 times trying to decide if I had had a stroke.

Love for a daughter and hatred for the Empire

Nah, I just watched it last night. It’s pretty clear she’s just making up a story, what else would you do in that situation?

You mean, like say, an entire movie that explained a massive plot hole from the first movie 40 years ago?

Given that 30-seconds of thought should lead pretty much anyone with half an imagination to pretty much this as the only conclusion - I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt this was the story during production.

Freedom of speech is the freedom to say what he wants without getting persecuted by his GOVERNMENT for doing so. It has nothing to do with private reprisals and it does not absolve him of all CONSEQUENCES of his actions and words.

You realize this is a post on io9 and it’s not suggesting that Leia/Fisher should be the only symbol for the movement, right?

Yes, it’s available on Kindle and other eBook formats, and there’s a fully dramatized audiobook version from GraphicAudio. Unfortunately, though, it’s out of print except as a print-on-demand trade paperback.

Fair enough—but I think we can agree that the further you get away from an intuitively recognizable culture, the harder it is to create that same kind of differentiation and the more intense the worldbuilding needs to be to turn a heroic figure into a superhero.

On superheroes...

Like other commenters were saying how Luke Skywalker has powers, cool outfit, gadgets and is even a cyborg! But not a superhero.

What makes someone a “Superhero”? I think it’s right there in the name.

It’s one of the things I like about io9: (generally) people can have different opinions without things devolving into rage comic-like threads.

My definition for a superhero:

“I have been bored to tears by all of the Marvel Netflix shows so far. Am I just missing the point”

Postman!

Also, just Michael is fine. Maybe even just Mike. Let’s not put him on too high a pedestal with this “Mr. Bay” stuff.