Monday, 20 January 2020
Innocence
... and then Innocence.
Sunday, 19 January 2020
Surprise
Surprise premiered twenty-two years ago tonight. Happy birthday Buffy! Or not...
(It’s one of three birthdays Buffy has on-screen, and she shares it with Edgar Allan Poe and Dolly Parton - Parton’s production company Sandollar helped make the show...)
(It’s one of three birthdays Buffy has on-screen, and she shares it with Edgar Allan Poe and Dolly Parton - Parton’s production company Sandollar helped make the show...)
Jeanne de Clisson
A legendary pirate with a motive of and ship called My Revenge, Jeanne de Clisson helped supply the English army at Crecy.
Saturday, 18 January 2020
How to write a Buffyverse novel
Kiersten White talks to Culturess about Slayer and Chosen and playing in other creators’ settings. Spoilers for Slayer.
Fight Fire With Games
DriveThruRPG is hosting eight different RPG PDF bundles to support firefighters in Australia.
The first Black Iron Legacy adventure
The Walking Wounded is a one-shot RPG from Gar Hanrahan, an extra in some ARCs of his second novel The Shadowed Saint.
Friday, 17 January 2020
Trinity roundtable at Onyx Pathcast
Ian Watson and Danielle Lauzon join Eddy Webb to discuss Trinity Continuum, Aeon, Aberrant, Adventure!, Mario Kart...
How to launch a network?
Following the anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager I looked up what else started the launch lineup of the United Paramount Network. Two hours a night, two nights a week, and everything else was cancelled after thirteen episodes and I’d never heard of any of them before looking this up.
Marker, a Stephen J. Cannell case-of-the-week light adventure show putting Richard Grieco in Hawaii (with Gates McFadden as Higgins to his Magnum) as the estranged son of a billionaire who discovers his father gave markers to people who had helped him or he thought might need help, like a cosy Equalizer.
The Watcher, an anthology crime show hosted by Sir Mix-A-Lot as a guy with surveillance cameras everywhere in Las Vegas. Nothing creepy there...
Platypus Man, a semi-autobiographical sitcom about a TV presenter.
Pig Sty, a sitcom about five single guys in a New York apartment and their superintendent.
Cannell was a safe pair of hands, and the geographical variety was a good call, but they were all untried ideas, and with a Star Trek show as your flagship maybe you needed to go a little more geeky...
By comparison, The WB launched five days earlier with a variety of sitcoms and youth-oriented programming and some ran for years as it added dramas and became the station Buffy was on...
My only personal experience of something like this was the launch of the then Channel 5 in 1997, which was most of a day every day, and offhand all I can remember was The Jack Docherty Show and I think Hercules: The Legendary Journeys started pretty soon.
Marker, a Stephen J. Cannell case-of-the-week light adventure show putting Richard Grieco in Hawaii (with Gates McFadden as Higgins to his Magnum) as the estranged son of a billionaire who discovers his father gave markers to people who had helped him or he thought might need help, like a cosy Equalizer.
The Watcher, an anthology crime show hosted by Sir Mix-A-Lot as a guy with surveillance cameras everywhere in Las Vegas. Nothing creepy there...
Platypus Man, a semi-autobiographical sitcom about a TV presenter.
Pig Sty, a sitcom about five single guys in a New York apartment and their superintendent.
Cannell was a safe pair of hands, and the geographical variety was a good call, but they were all untried ideas, and with a Star Trek show as your flagship maybe you needed to go a little more geeky...
By comparison, The WB launched five days earlier with a variety of sitcoms and youth-oriented programming and some ran for years as it added dramas and became the station Buffy was on...
My only personal experience of something like this was the launch of the then Channel 5 in 1997, which was most of a day every day, and offhand all I can remember was The Jack Docherty Show and I think Hercules: The Legendary Journeys started pretty soon.
The back-to-basics series of your setting
Tonight marks twenty-five years since Star Trek: Voyager launched the United Paramount Network, a big push with a back-to-basics Star Trek show.
What would the back-to-basics series setup of your own or preferred setting look like?
Vampire: The Masquerade about young anarchs in an American city? A Buffy series about, ooh, say, a Slayer in high school? The third edition not-quite setting was this for D&D, I think?
What would the back-to-basics series setup of your own or preferred setting look like?
Vampire: The Masquerade about young anarchs in an American city? A Buffy series about, ooh, say, a Slayer in high school? The third edition not-quite setting was this for D&D, I think?
Thursday, 16 January 2020
Star Trek: Voyager at 25
Star Trek: Voyager premiered at 8 p.m. on this day twenty-five years ago.
io9 looks back and Tor launches a rewatch.
It was the headline launch show for the United Paramount Network, taking up the entire two-hour opening night, a big demonstration of trust in the Star Trek name. It was the only show in the original lineup to last more than thirteen episodes! (Even then, the first season ran to fifteen including the opening two-hour pilot, with four more being held back to start season two early. The 37s would have been a much better season finale than Learning Curve, though it also worked as the season two opener.)
It was a back-to-basics planet-of-the-week show compared to Deep Space Nine and even the big luxury Enterprise of The Next Generation. As a result some of the built-in conflicts and issues never went as far as they might have (until Battlestar Galactica took some of it and ran) but it still provided some classics like Year Of Hell, The Void, and, of course, Bride Of Chaotica!
io9 looks back and Tor launches a rewatch.
It was the headline launch show for the United Paramount Network, taking up the entire two-hour opening night, a big demonstration of trust in the Star Trek name. It was the only show in the original lineup to last more than thirteen episodes! (Even then, the first season ran to fifteen including the opening two-hour pilot, with four more being held back to start season two early. The 37s would have been a much better season finale than Learning Curve, though it also worked as the season two opener.)
It was a back-to-basics planet-of-the-week show compared to Deep Space Nine and even the big luxury Enterprise of The Next Generation. As a result some of the built-in conflicts and issues never went as far as they might have (until Battlestar Galactica took some of it and ran) but it still provided some classics like Year Of Hell, The Void, and, of course, Bride Of Chaotica!
Christopher Tolkien
Christopher Tolkien has died, aged 95. Without his work, we would have so much less of Middle-earth and more.
Wednesday, 15 January 2020
Good Omens
The TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens reaches BBC 2 tonight, some months after Amazon and indeed DVD and Blu-Ray.
Tuesday, 14 January 2020
Glasgotham
As a native of Edinburgh, of course the news that The Batman will return to Glasgow as a location for Gotham City is highly amusing. Sorry.
Monday, 13 January 2020
Star Trek Adventures: Clear Skies
A new Star Trek Adventures streaming game, from the creator/GM of Shield Of Tomorrow. Q&A.
Edit in time for the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager, first episode now on Youtube!
Further edit: an in-depth interview with GM Eric Campbell at Continuing Mission.
Edit in time for the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager, first episode now on Youtube!
Further edit: an in-depth interview with GM Eric Campbell at Continuing Mission.
Sunday, 12 January 2020
The Haunting
The Haunting Of Hill House (1959) takes the basic setup of an investigation into a supposedly haunted house as the start of an expert study of some very damaged people while still working as a ghost story.
The Haunting (1963) is a pretty close adaptation, and a bona fide classic with it.
The Haunting (1999) is a pretty but dumb ghost train ride which vaguely resembles the outline of the source material. The plot about covering the study of the haunting with a sleep study could have worked on its own, but... As is, some effects have aged well, though the metal gryphon moving its head creepily really should have come before it attacking the group. Some of it would work in a high weird urban fantasy setting.
The Haunting Of Hill House (2018) also only vaguely resembles the original. The family drama in the middle of a very haunted house and years later is a whole different hook. It’s a great creepy family drama but after starting at the fireworks factory it takes a long time to get back there. The central episodes are the high points, not sure the ending works after seeing episode five.
The Haunting (1963) is a pretty close adaptation, and a bona fide classic with it.
The Haunting (1999) is a pretty but dumb ghost train ride which vaguely resembles the outline of the source material. The plot about covering the study of the haunting with a sleep study could have worked on its own, but... As is, some effects have aged well, though the metal gryphon moving its head creepily really should have come before it attacking the group. Some of it would work in a high weird urban fantasy setting.
The Haunting Of Hill House (2018) also only vaguely resembles the original. The family drama in the middle of a very haunted house and years later is a whole different hook. It’s a great creepy family drama but after starting at the fireworks factory it takes a long time to get back there. The central episodes are the high points, not sure the ending works after seeing episode five.
Saturday, 11 January 2020
They Came From Beyond The Grave!
Onyx Path using a D10-based system for a game about classic horror monsters? It’ll never catch on. ;)
Friday, 10 January 2020
Stay Indoors
I’m currently at home and listening to the gale force winds outside. Compared to the other extreme weather around the world they may not be a big deal, but some gusts are fast enough to knock over high-sided vehicles.
I’ve mentioned the weather here before, mostly how it might affect adventures. What would it take to isolate the party for a night or so?
I’ve mentioned the weather here before, mostly how it might affect adventures. What would it take to isolate the party for a night or so?
The Grey Book
Sir Ian McKellen on playing Gandalf, from when he started, twenty years ago today.
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