I emphatically did not do a nano, but since my current obsession is driving me at a rate of about 1,000 words per hour, and has a clear outline and structure, I might yet accidentally a nano by early December.

"We need a better campaign strategy," President QR-18B said. Its synthesized voice crackled a little under the stress. "And that's what I'm paying you to figure out."

Definitely the weakest episode of the season. It felt far more like some of those first season episodes, back to the victim of the week when nobody was entirely clear on their role in the story, yet. It's nice to get a break from the mythology, but there was so much weak writing, directing, etc. on this episode that…

Dystopia is the spin. A bleak future of gluttons is a pretty horrifying future from the right standpoint.

More important, it can bring the food to where the people are. The real challenge isn't growing enough food- it's growing enough food and then distributing it. When countries like the US pay farmers to keep land fallow, you know that there are structural issues above and beyond the growing of food itself.

"We're going to do an episode where we explore the TARDIS."

Sinclair vanishes because the actor was terrible. That's the sad truth. The prophecies are a cheap way to establish cosmic import to the events of the story. I love B5, but the prophecy mongering was one of its worst traits.

Weeks is using the Machine to further his mission- and his mission is to protect people (specifically Americans, and more specifically, the Americans that the government thinks deserves it, but still- protection). Root thinks the Machine should exist for itself.

Illiteracy does not mean that letters and words are an utter mystery to you. My grandmother could read labels and traffic signs, but she was illiterate- she couldn't read anything more complex; newspapers and bills were a mystery to her.

They're both Scalzi, and they're both focused on the weirdness that is doing business in Hollywood. Many of the characters that show up in the latter portion of Redshirts are similar to characters that show up in Agent to the Stars.

That sort of humor definitely wouldn't have kept up for 300 pages. I'm not sure that it became any less predictable in the second half- most of the events that happened were telegraphed from quite a distance.

Really? I saw it miles away. And then all I could think about was how much the Hollywood bits lifted from Agent to the Stars, at least in tone.

Even if we ignore the cartoons- the film starts with a simple premise too thin to support a film, and then changes premises halfway through. Redshirts does the same thing. It's not all bad- both Office Space and Redshirts are highly enjoyable.

I didn't dislike it, per se, but I'm just so tired of authors getting metafictional in their stories. It definitely does work well as a screenplay, and I half imagine that Sclazi intended that.

I liked it, but it suffered through what I call "The Office Space problem".

Have at.

I believe that her erratic behavior has a coherent underlying purpose, and I believe that this is going to be a plot point (essentially, Finch will defeat her by treating her the same way he treated the world- build a system that analyzes a vast amount of data, but on a single person scale). But right now, I just feel…

I was commenting to my wife about how I appreciated the fact that the show didn't feel the need to stop and explain everything. A lesser show would have needed to tell the audience what "Root" means, and have stopped the plot to make sure the use of the signal alphabet didn't lose anyone.

I will say this: the early episodes established the premise as a procedural. Everything else went on to destroy all that work. As the show has progressed, it's strayed further and further from that idea, because the people behind it knew that wasn't what they wanted to make- but it's what they needed to do to sell it.

There was so much to love in this episode, but there was one thing to hate: Root.