Darren

The X-Files (Topps) Annual #1 – Hallow Eve (Review)

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Darren

This August (and a little of September), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the second season of The X-Files. In November, we’ll be looking at the third season. And maybe more.

No matter how you cut it, the creative team of Stefan Petruscha and Charles Adlard were prolific. The duo only worked on The X-Files comics book for seventeen months between January 1995 and May 1996, but they put out a phenomenal amount of work. On top of sixteen issues of the monthly series, there were also two digests, a number of short stories and an annual. In most cases, some of this work would be outsourced to another creative team, but Petrucha and Adlard remain the creative team for Topps’ X-Files comic.

While this undoubtedly required a great deal of creative energy from Petrucha, churning out scripts on a regular basis, it is worth pausing to praise artist Charles Adlard. These days, for a variety of reasons, it seems that major comic book artists have difficulty producing twelve twenty-odd-page issues in a year. Not only was Adlard able to meet that objective, he was able to do that while drawing a large volume of supplementary material, including this feature-length annual.

All about Eve…

It’s remarkable how consistent it all is. One of the advantages of a tie-in comic book with a steady creative theme is that there’s a much clearer authorial voice. Although Chris Carter oversaw the production of The X-Files, the demand of weekly network television mean that some episodes got more attention than others, and that particular voices tend to shine through. Darin Morgan writes his own version of The X-Files, as do Glen Morgan and James Wong or Howard Gordon or Vince Gilligan. (This isn’t a bad thing, by the way.)

On a comic, with all the issues written by the same author and illustrated by the same artist, there is a bit more consistency. Even though Hallow Eve is a stand-alone one-shot story that exists quite separate to Petrucha and Adlard’s twelve-issue meta-arc, it fits quite comfortably with their themes and subtexts. It’s an episode about history and memory, and perception and reality.

Shocking…

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Filed under: Comics, The X-Files | Tagged: Charles Adlard, eve, faith, ghosts, history, memory, mitochondrial eve, mulder, rational, religion, scully, Stefan Petrucha, the x-files, Topps, x-files | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Fearful Symmetry by Olivia Woods (Review)

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Darren

The September and October, we’re taking a look at the jam-packed 1994 to 1995 season of Star Trek, including Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. Check back daily for the latest review.

Fearful Symmetry had a long and painful history. The novel was originally scheduled for release April 2007. This would have seen the novel published about a year after the release of the previous Star Trek: Deep Space Nine relaunch novel, Warpath. The plan had been for new author Leanna Morrow to write the novel. When that proved impossible, Olivia Wood stepped in to rescue the assignment. Fearful Symmetry was eventually published in June 2008, over a year behind the initial schedule.

It’s interesting to speculate how that delay affected the Deep Space Nine relaunch. The next novel in the series, The Soul Key, would be the last published before the print Star Trek universe realigned as part of the Typhon Pact and The Fall, very much “event” books that served to relaunch the fictional universe. It is interesting to speculate whether the year between Warpath and Fearful Symmetry contributed to the decision to discontinue that particular iteration of the Deep Space Nine relaunch.

Still, whatever the reason, Fearful Symmetry is more interesting than successful. It is a book written with a number of great ideas, but some very flawed execution. It adopts a very “comic book” approach towards the Star Trek universe – featuring high concepts and crossovers and character who have been exaggerated slightly and distorted so as to fit the general perception of them rather than any consistent internal characterisation.

Fearful Symmetry is a bold and ambitious piece of work, particularly from a first time novelist. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work quite as well as it needs to.

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: deep space nine relaunch, ds9, ds9 relaunch, fearful symmetry, iliana ghemor, Kira, Kira Nerys, Mirror Universe, olivia woods, pocket books, star trek, star trek: deep space nine, the soul key | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Season 2 (Review)

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Darren

This August (and a little of September), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the second season of The X-Files. In November, we’ll be looking at the third season. And maybe more.

The first few seasons of a television show are very much about defining the show – figuring out what works and what doesn’t, and what form the show will take. After all, a lot of discussion and planning takes place during development, but all of that is on paper. It’s only once you’ve worked with the cast and had a chance to gauge audience response that it is possible to truly understand a television show.

The first two seasons of The X-Files seem like an attempt to map out the show, to mark the boundaries and do some fine calibration. The show had been a sleeper hit in its first season, popular enough to secure a second season on Fox. However, the second season had seen the series become a breakout hit. It climbed rather dramatically in the ratings, and the show would continue that ascent through to the fifth season in the lead-in to the feature film. However, the second season still feels like it’s a learning curve.

There are exceptional episodes in the second season. The season provides a wealth of classic stories. Fresh Bones and Our Town stand out as two of the best monster-of-the-week stories that the show had done by this point in its life-cycle. Even outside of that, there are classics like One Breath or Humbug or The Host or F. Emasculata. However, there are also quite a few misfires like Fearful Symmetry or Excelsis Dei or 3.

There are a lot of points in the second season where it feels like The X-Files is experimenting, trying new things that would ultimately become part of the show’s unique identity. Not all of these elements worked, but that is the luxury of a second season. It allows the production team to do that sort of experimentation so they might find their groove.

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: abduction, Arc, chris carter, conspiracy, Darin Morgan, David Nutter, Glen Morgan, Government, James Wong, kim manners, mulder, Rob Bowman, scully, the x-files, vince gilligan, x-files | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Equilibrium (Review)

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Darren

Equilibrium is another troubled Dax episode. Dax is probably the hardest character on the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine cast to write for, if only because of the character’s central premise. “Well-adjusted functionally immortal alien slug inside a young woman’s body” is a nice character description, but it’s hard to ground a character-driven story in that. It’s tempting just to turn the Dax symbiote into a convenient macguffin that can drive various plots.

To date, Playing God is really the only Dax-centred episode of Deep Space Nine that has placed the emphasis on Jadzia rather than the slug inside here. (Although Blood Oath did at least try to deal with how a current Trill host deals with obligations incurred by past lives.) In Dax, the symbiote was a gateway to a pretty conventional and generic murder mystery story. In Invasive Procedures, the symbiote was something particularly valuable to be stolen and exploited.

The biggest problem with Equilibrium is that – like Dax and Invasive Procedures before it – the episode uses the Dax symbiote as a springboard to a story that is more driven by Sisko and Bashir than it is by Jadzia Dax. While Equilibrium does have a great hook and some biting social commentary, Dax feels more like a plot point than a character in her own right.

Shocking behaviour…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: 1994, 1995, america, Anger, bitterness, class, Dax, deep space nine, ds9, ennui, equilibrium, reflection, René Echevarria, ron moore, social commentary, Trill | 5 Comments »

The X-Files (Topps) #7 – Trepanning Opera (Review)

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Darren

This August (and a little of September), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the second season of The X-Files. In November, we’ll be looking at the third season. And maybe more.

Trepanning Opera is something of a one-shot story, albeit the story where Stefan Petrucha begins to concede that his first year writing The X-Files tie-in comic is really one single long-form story. Initially, Trepanning Opera looks like a standard monster-of-the-week (or perhaps that should be “monster-of-the-month”) story, only to eventually reveal that the connections to the rest of Petrucha’s run are more than simply thematic in nature. “Everything is connected, Mulder,” his contact assures him. “Everything.”

Head’s up…

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Filed under: Comics, The X-Files | Tagged: Charles Adlard, conspiracy, mudler, mythology, psychic, scully, Stefan Petrucha, the x-files, third eye, trepanning, trepanning opera | 9 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Lives of Dax: Allegro Ouroboros in D Minor (Joran) by S.D. Perry (Review)

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Darren

Joran Dax was a much more interesting character in Equilibrium than he became in later appearances. In shows like Facets and Field of Fire, Joran went from being a socially dysfunctional individual who murdered his supervisor to a serial killer with an in-depth understanding of the psyche of a killer. The shift is understandable. After all, “killer” is much more eye-catching with word “serial” placed in front of it.

Unfortunately, it has a tendency to diminish the character. Serial killers are a dime-a-dozen in pulp fiction. Although they had been a fixture of the American popular consciousness for quite some time, the critical and commercial success of The Silence of the Lambs had turned serial killers into a cottage industry within popular culture. Films and television shows about people hunting serial killers became fixtures of the pop culture landscape, to the point where it all got exhausting.

The story of Joran Dax as presented in Equilibrium is tragic and more than a little compelling. In that story, Joran was a damaged individual who was not ready to merge with another mind. The process shattered his psyche completely, breaking his tenuous hold on reality. As a result of poor screening and a quirk of fate, the thing he had wanted for the most of his life pushed him over the edge. He lashed out, killing the person who had initially rejected him from the initiation programme.

It is a story that makes Joran seem like a creature to be pitied. Indeed, Equilibrium ends with Jadzia embracing Joran – as if accepting that his actions were not entirely his fault. Unfortunately, Allegro Ouroboros in D Minor rather heavily re-writes this back story, in favour turning Joran into a serial killer. Reading Allegro Ouroboros in D Minor, Joran comes off as even more of a Hannibal Lecter knock-off than he did during Avery Brooks’ scenery chewing in Facets. Which is saying something.

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Leave a comment »

The X-Files – Anasazi (Review)

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Darren

This August (and a little of September), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the second season of The X-Files. In November, we’ll be looking at the third season. And maybe more.

Burn it.

– C.G.B. Spender, 16 April 1995

On alien soil…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: albert hosteen, anasazi, bill mulder, chosen one, conspiracy, disappeared, genocide, Guilt, hero's journey, holocaust, mulder, mytharc, Native American, nazis, operation paperclip, paperclip, scully, the blessing way, the x-files, trauma, vanished, x-files, you only expose your father | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Maps to the Stars

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Darren

It is a cliché to suggest that Hollywood loves movies about Hollywood.

Sure, quite often these are celebratory meditations on how great Tinseltown is – Argo was the story of how Hollywood saved the lives of Americans caught up in the Iranian Revolution; Hitchcock celebrated the making of Psycho. Sometimes these are more cynical and jaded explorations of how Hollywood works, seeking to expose the community’s seedy underbelly to the world – Robert Altman’s The Player remains the definitive example, but films like What Just Happened probably count as well.

These stock Hollywood-story-about-Hollywood are the weakest aspects of Maps to the Stars. The movie often feels like it’s trying too hard to add a surface gloss of what people expect from a film about Hollywood, on top of a much more interesting and compelling tale of dysfunction and decay. Maps to the Stars is held together by a rake of terrific performances and a wonderfully creepy central metaphor, but it feels let down by the more superficial elements of the script.

We’re all in the gutter…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: celebrity, cronenberg, david cronenberg, film, hollywood, horror, john cusack, Julianne Moore, maps to the stars, Mia Wasikowska, Movies, non-review review, review | 4 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – House of Quark (Review)

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Darren

House of Quark is a delightful episode that probably does a better job of setting the tone for the third season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine than The Search. As much as the Dominion were introduced as “a big deal” and clearly intended to change the show’s status quo, the third season does very little with them. There are a few mentions here and there, a late-season two-parter, two scattered episodes looking at aspects of the Dominion, and a series finalé, but they don’t drive the third season as much as one might expect, or as much as they drive the fifth through seventh seasons.

In contrast, House of Quark is a decidedly irreverent look at the world of Star Trek, a decidedly cynical perspective on one of the franchise’s sacred cows – a downright subversive exploration of something that the franchise takes for granted.

A knife story, there, Quark…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: deep space nine, Ferengi, house of quark, keiko, klingons, Marriage, O'BRIEN, romance, ronald d. moore, star trek: deep space nine | 7 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Hundred-Foot Journey

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Darren

Guest review by Sinéad Finegan. You can find her at sineadfinegan.com.

Anyone who goes to see this foodie film to sample a little of the its finest dish – Helen Mirren – will not be disappointed. Humour, light-hearted fun, and a gently simmering Mirren are definitely on the menu; and who would complain?

One particularly memorable scene stands out: Mirren as Madame Mallory, the impeccably dressed proprietress of a Michelin-starred restaurant, stands before her assembled staff and silently holds up a single, rather flaccid-looking, asparagus which droops mournfully and looks an altogether unappetising specimen. Food should not be like a tired marriage, she informs us; no, the food in her restaurant must be a steamy affair. Which is rather a good assessment of the film itself: a fun, light-hearted and steamy foodie affair.