Television | the m0vie blog

Stefan Petrucha and Charles Adlard’s Run on The X-Files (Topps) (Review)

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Darren

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

Topps’ X-Files comic was a massive success in the nineties.

The monthly series ran for forty-one issues between January 1995 and September 1998. In that time, Topps also produced an X-Files graphic novel, three digests, two annuals, a spin-off line of Season One comics and a miniseries adaptation of a Kevin Anderson novel. They also reprinted the series in quite a few formats, indicating that the comic sold well even outside the monthly schedule. The only reason that the series came to an end was because Topps eventually decided to retire from comic book publishing.

After Topps withdrew from the comic book market following the Great Comic Crash of the mid-to-late nineties, the X-Files license lay fallow. Barring two Lone Gunman comics published by Dark Horse in 2001, there would be no new officially licensed X-Files comics written between September 1998 and September 2008, when Frank Spotnitz scripted a miniseries for Wildstorm. It is incredible to look back on the success of the Topps line for those three-and-a-half years when it held the license.

A lot of the credit for that success is owed to writer Stefan Petrucha, cover artist Miran Kim and interior artist Charles Adlard.

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Filed under: Comics, The X-Files | Tagged: Charles Adlard, Comics, miran kim, mulder, scully, Stefan Petrucha, Television, ten thirteen, the x-files, tie-in, x-files | 6 Comments »

The X-Files – Wetwired (Review)

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Darren

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

Wetwired is an oddity.

It is the penultimate episode of the third season, written by special effects supervisor Matt Beck. It is very much a conspiracy episode, albeit one lacking any real sense of forward moment and with only the loosest thematic ties to the rest of the show’s mythology. Unlike – say – Soft Light, this is not simply a “monster of the week” story with elements of the mythology grafted in. The show has largely move past those, which is why Avatar felt so weird.

More like “terror vision”, am I right?

Instead, Wetwired is that strangest of government conspiracy stories. It is an episode dedicated almost exclusively to shady goings-on at the highest levels of government, but with no mention or inference of aliens or other sinister long-term plots. Wetwired stands out as something strange and hard to place; perhaps its closest analogue is The Pine Bluff Variant from towards the end of the fifth season.

The result is an oddity that is a little uneven and disjointed, an episode packed with clever ideas and concepts, but difficulty connecting them to each other.

Scully has had it with Mulder’s quips about her driving…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: conspiracy, Control, Government, l.a. heat, matt beck, media, middle management, morality, mr. x, mulder, paranoia, politics of fear, scully, Television, the x-files, v-chip, violence, x, x-files | 1 Comment »

Star Trek – The Doomsday Machine (Review)

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Darren

The first Star Trek pilot, The Cage, was produced in 1964. To celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, this December we are reviewing the second season of the original Star Trek show. You can check out our first season reviews here. Check back daily for the latest review.

The Doomsday Machine is another Star Trek classic.

Much like Amok Time directly before it, The Doomsday Machine is a piece of Star Trek that works both as powerful drama and clever allegory. It is an episode that has had a tremendous influence on the franchise. The “planet killer” has become a staple of Star Trek tie-in fiction, and even the franchise itself has kept the episode’s legacy alive, with the son of Commodore Decker originally planned as a regular in Star Trek: Phase II and eventually appearing in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

All hands on Decker…

The Doomsday Machine is at once a beautifully tragic character study and a potent cautionary tale for the atomic age. The episode the first example of “Star Trek does Moby Dick”, a story template that would become popular enough to sustain another episode in the same season, quite a few later Star Trek episodes across the franchise and no fewer than two of the franchise’s trips to the big screen. In many ways, The Doomsday Machine sets the template for Star Trek engaging with classic literature, building off The Conscience of a King.

It’s also beautifully produced, right down to the creature that Spinrad himself described as “a windsock dipped in cement.”

A commandeering presence…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: armageddon, command, Commodore, commodore decker, commodore matt decker, decker, doomsday, doomsday clock, herman kahn, james t. kirk, kirk, Leonard Nimoy, literature, mad, matt decker, Moby Dick, mutually assured destruction, nimoy, norman spinrad, nuclear annihilation, obsession, science fiction, Shatner, spock, star trek, the bomb, William Shatner | 12 Comments »

The X-Files (Topps) #15-16 – Home of the Brave (Review)

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Darren

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

And so, we approach the end of an era.

The end of the third season of The X-Files brought down the curtain in a number of different ways. It was the last season of The X-Files to air beginning-to-end on Friday nights, turning it into a truly global phenomenon. It was the last season to air before Chris Carter launched Millennium and the last season broadcast before the show began to focus on The X-Files: Fight the Future; perhaps making it the last season of the show to have Chris Carter’s completely undivided attention for quite some time.

This is the end…

Amid all these changes, the shifting of the creative team on the tie-in comic book is not the biggest change taking place, but it contributes to a larger sense that The X-Files is changing. Writer Stefan Patrucha and artist Charles Adlard had worked on The X-Files since Topps launched the comic. On top of their sixteen issues of the regular series, the duo had worked on an annual, two digests and a variety of short (and special) stories during their tenure.

It is very strange to see the pair departing, because their work on X-Files tie-in comic book ranks as one of the most consistently interesting tie-ins published in mainstream comics.

Don’t go into the light…

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Filed under: Comics, The X-Files | Tagged: Charles Adlard, chris carter, conspiracy culture, conspiracy theories, fear, mistrust, monsters, paranoia, petrucha, Stefan Petrucha, survivalists, ten thirteen, the x-files, Topps, x-files | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – New Visions #3: Cry Vengeance (Review)

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Darren

These Are the Voyages… aired in May 2005. Star Trek has been off the air for almost a decade; longer in the eyes of certain fans who have their own earlier cut-off dates. Although JJ Abrams brought Star Trek back to the big screen, it is not quite the same. It is not simply that – as Ronald D. Moore has argued – Star Trek feels more at home on the small screen. There is also a sense that there is a dearth of “new” stories in the Star Trek universe. One two-hour movie ever three years does not cut it, after all.

A whole cottage industry has developed around trying to sate Star Trek fans – to deliver the new episodes that it seems so many fans so desperately want. There are month comic books set within the continuity of the recent movies. There are novels that unfold in a loosely serialised format building off the end of the various twenty-fourth century shows. There are numerous fan projects churning out their own new Star Trek stories, whether featuring the original characters or a novel twist on the franchise.

Shaking things up a bit…

This desire for new Star Trek is understandable. Given the rate at which the franchise was produced during the nineties, it is hard to imagine living in a world where new Star Trek arrives by drip-feed. In a way, John Byrne’s New Visions series is the most candid attempt to cater to this impulse among Star Trek fans. Using a wealth of images from the original Star Trek series, some photoshop skills, and years of experience writing comic books, John Byrne is literally able to stitch together new stories from the eighty classic Star Trek shows.

It is a bizarre blend of storytelling and cannibalism that serves as a fairly cynical metaphor for a particular approach to tie-in Star Trek material.

“Use your indoor voice…”

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: comic strips, Comics, IDW Publishing, John Byrne, mash-up, photographs, photos, remix, star trek, the doomsday machine, tos | 2 Comments »

The X-Files – Quagmire (Review)

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Darren

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

Quagmire is a delightful little episode, one of third season episodes that most effectively embodies what casual fans (or even those who have never seen the show) think of when they hear the words “The X-Files.” In Wanting to Believe, author Robert Shearman describes Quagmire as something akin to a “live action Scooby Doo“, and he’s not far wrong. This is Mulder and Scully searching together in the darkness, looking for a monster that may or may not be there. You don’t get more archetypical X-Files than that.

One of the defining features of the third season of The X-Files has been a sense of consolidation. It feels like the show experimented a great deal in its first two years, but the third season is very much about cementing and solidifying its identity. It is no wonder, then, that the third season has such a high concentration of archetypal episode – episodes you can show an interested viewer and say “this is The X-Files in a forty-five minute nutshell.” In that respect, Quagmire ranks with D.P.O. or Pusher or Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose as a great introduction to the show.

There’s something in the water!

Of course, Quagmire is a very good introduction to The X-Files for new viewers, but it is also something of a farewell. It is Kim Newton’s last script for the show. Newton had joined the writing staff at the start of the third season. Her other major credit was Revelations. Like Revelations, there is a sense that Quagmire was heavily re-written before it made it in front of the cameras. In this case, it is something of an open secret that Quagmire received a fairly significant polish from departing story editor Darin Morgan, whose fingerprints are all over the finished draft.

If Darin Morgan bid farewell to The X-Files with Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space”, then Quagmire serves as something of a coda to his time on the show. If that is the case, it makes for an uncharacteristically upbeat postscript to Morgan’s work on the show.

They really collared the bad guy…

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: big blue, conversation on the rock, cotr, Darin Morgan, extinction, fear, hope, kim newton, monster, monster of the week, monsters, mulder, scully, the x-files, x-files | 4 Comments »

Star Trek – Amok Time (Review)

Posted on December 5, 2014 by Darren

Amok Time was the fifth show produced for the second season of Star Trek, but was the first show to air. This isn’t unusual. The production and broadcast order of various Star Trek episodes have not necessarily matched up. On shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, this was usually due to production delays or changes on specific episodes. On Star Trek: Voyager, the first and second seasons produced episodes that would not be aired until the other side of summer.

However, on the original Star Trek, the production and broadcast order of the episodes is radically different. For example, Friday’s Child was the third episode of the second season produced, but the eleventh broadcast. This makes watching the show in production order on blu ray a delightfully frustrating experience. The first five episodes produced for the second season are split across three different discs.

Good wholesome family fun…

Sometimes the changes in production order were purely practical. For example, The Man Trap was the first episode of Star Trek to air because it happened to be the most suitable of the episodes that had been produced to that point. The broadcast order of the first season introduced all manner of production and continuity glitches, with uniforms and cast changing seemingly randomly. Still, The Man Trap was felt to be, effectively, the least bad option to introduce new audiences to Star Trek.

Amok Time, the second season premiere, was an entirely different kettle of fish. This was easily the strongest of the three Star Trek season premieres, and there’s a sense that the production team knew this going into the episode. Designed to ruthlessly capitalise on the popularity and success surrounding the character of Spock, the episode was very clearly intended to put the show’s best foot forward for audiences returning to watch the second season. The result is one of the best episodes the franchise ever produced.

Spock remains as sharp as ever…

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Amok Time, hedonism, kirk, mysticism, ponn farr, repression, sexual repression, spock, star trek, summer of love, t'pau, t'pring, Theodore Sturgeon, vulcan, Vulcans, world-building | 29 Comments »

The X-Files (Topps) Digest #2 – Dead to the World (Review)

Posted on December 5, 2014 by Darren

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

Stefan Petrucha and Charles Adlard are winding at this point in their curatorship of Topps’ The X-Files comic book. The duo have contributed an absolutely staggering volume of work to the line. On top of monthly issues and short stories, there have been annuals and digests. The volume of the output has been staggering. All of it has been written by Petrucha and the vast majority was illustrated by Adlard. The quality has – generally speaking – been quite impressive.

Dead to the World is the headline story in the second “digest” published by Topps comics. As with Big Foot, Warm Heart before it, the format of the “digest” feels a little strange. There is a single (and rather long) comic written by Petrucha and illustrated by Adlard, following by a collection of shorts taken from Ray Bradbury Comics, a somewhat less popular feature of Topps’ comic book publishing line. There is a sense that the format might have worked better as a collection of short X-Files-themed stories for a variety of creators.

Face to face…

Nevertheless, the result is interesting. In many ways, Big Foot, Warm Heart seemed to point at where Petrucha and Adlard would go when they wrapped up their massive twelve-part “Aquarius” mega-arc. With its reflections on human failings and human abuses, it seemed like Big Foot, Warm Heart set the tone for the stories that would follow – like One Player Only or Falling. It offered a tease of things to come, suggesting the humanity could be more monstrous than any mythological creature.

In contrast, it is very tough to see where Dead to the World might have been pointing. Then again, Petrucha and Adlard would be gone from the comic a month after its publication. So perhaps the story’s funereal atmosphere feels appropriate.

Here there be monsters…

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Filed under: Comics, The X-Files | Tagged: Alchemy, Blood, Charles Adlard, Comics, dead to the world, existence, feeding, immortality, metaphors, monster, monsters, pseudo-vampires, reality, Stefan Petrucha, the x-files, Tooms, Topps, vampires | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – Spock’s World by Diane Duane (Review)

Posted on December 5, 2014 by Darren

One of the more interesting aspect of Star Trek tie-in media during the eighties was the sense of freedom enjoyed by those working on the line.

One of the more infamous examples concerned DC’s attempts to publish a monthly comic during the release cycle of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The three films tended to build off one another, forming a tight continuity, but that did not stop the comic book company from trying to build off the ending of each of the films, leading to a variety of weird continuity hijinks. Spock left to work on a Vulcan ship; Kirk took command of the Excelsior; a Klingon joined the crew.

Writers working on the tie-in novels enjoyed a similar amount of freedom. By the time that Spock’s World was published in 1989, Diane Duane had been able to firmly establish her own supporting cast of characters in her various tie-in novels. Spock’s World includes appearances from Duane regulars like K’s’t’lk and Harb Tanzer, introduced in The Wounded Sky; even Lia Burke from My Enemy, My Ally puts in an appearance. It really feels like Duane has carved out her own space within the larger Star Trek universe.

However, perhaps that freedom finds its strongest expression in the fact that Duane was able to map an entire cultural and social history unto the planet Vulcan. Spock’s World reads almost like a biography of a fictional planet – charting the history of Vulcan from the planet’s earliest days through to the twenty-third century. It is a delightfully bold and intriguing Star Trek book, one utterly unlike any other tie-in ever published.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Amok Time, bbs, continuity, Diane Duane, Federation, history, Ireland, novels, spock, spock's world, star trek, the political is personal, tos, vulcan | 2 Comments »

The X-Files – Avatar (Review)

Posted on December 5, 2014 by Darren

This November (and a little of December), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the third season of The X-Files and the first (and only) season of Space: Above and Beyond.

Avatar is really the first time that The X-Files relies on a member of its supporting cast to carry a story all by themselves.

Later seasons will get a bit more adventurous when it comes to sharing screen time. Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man and En Ami both offer viewers a glimpse at the man behind the cigarette. The Lone Gunmen prepare for their own spin-off with The Unusual Suspects and Three of a Kind. Even Skinner gets a couple more character-centric episodes with Zero Sum and S.R. 819. In a way, Hungry is a day-in-the-life episode of a monster of the week.

Pushing Mulder to the background…

Avatar is an episode that demonstrates that these kinds of stories are possible – that The X-Files can lift the focus off of Mulder and Scully for a week and flesh out those characters who exist at the periphery of the series. Just under two years after he was first introduced, Mitch Pileggi has proven himself invaluable to the series. Asking him to carry an episode like this demonstrates the show’s faith in the character.

Avatar is a bit rough around the edges, struggling to decide whether it is part of the show’s conspiracy mythology or a stand-alone monster tale in a season that has worked hard to delineate the two types of show. Still, it’s an ambitious late-season installment that makes a lasting impression on what The X-Files can be.