Spock! We only have to test your urine!
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Firsts in comic books
The first skin tight costume and mask was The Phantom , February 1937 (comic strips). The first masked crime fighter--and I guess that means urban crime and not jungle crime-- was The Crimson Avenger , Detective Comics #20, October 1938. The first superhero was, of course, Superman , June 1938. The first comic book was Funnies on Parade , 1933. The first comic book with new material was in February 1935. And did you know that the first actor to actually dress as Superman was Ray Middleton at the 1939 World's Fair?
Robbie the Robot model kit
A great looking Robbie the Robot model kit is available fro Entertainment Earth!
Star Trek episode "The Alternative Factor"
"The Alternative Factor" Season 1, episode 27. Existence and non-existence. Matter and anti-matter. Spock reports, "The entire magnetic field of this solar system simply blinked." Non-existence, a cosmic winking out. It occurs within every quadrant of the galaxy, it is said. Kirk and Spock beam down and meet some dude named Lazarus who explains that he is "chasing the devil's own spawn" that wiped out his entire universe. There is lots of fighting in a fuzzy blue screen, apparently to symbolize the alternate plane. When Lazarus is taken aboard the Enterprise they sure give the guy a lot of leeway for not knowing who he really is and Spock saying he is the center of all the disturbances. He has complete run of the ship, even a second time after assaulting two crewmen. To solve the issue, Kirk gets transported to the blue plane and crosses over into the anti-matter universe. He finds out it is the anti-Lazarus. Lazarus then gets stranded in the br...
Star Trek episode "Whom Gods Destroy"
"Whom Gods Destroy" Season 3, episode 14. This episode features the Chinese grandfather from the beginning and ending of the movie Gremlins! (I only remember that because we watched it in our household very recently.) In this installment, there is a medicine, a drug, for the insane. A previous starship captain, Garth, is now criminally insane, takes over the asylum and now tries to get aboard and take over the Enterprise. All that and the fact that he has somehow learned the trick of becoming a changeling, able to transform his body into the appearance of anybody else; oh yes, and he has a green lady alien as a sidekick. One interesting aspect to this whole mess is the code "Queen to Queen's level 3" that most be answered before beam up. Kirk won't give away the code, preventing the inmates from rampaging all over the ship. My concern is that since this is such a good idea, and also works so perfectly here, wouldn't this become standard practice all...
Ripley was supposed to die in the original ending!
The Alternate Endings of 20 Famous Movies - http://pulse.me/s/1WT8ye One of the proposed endings of their original Alien movie features kind of a neat twist. The xenomorph was scripted to eat Ripley's head and then put out a distress call--in Ripley's voice! This could be a cool evolutionary adaptation by the xenomorph to lure new victims.
Han Solo was supposed to die in Return of the Jedi
The Alternate Endings of 20 Famous Movies - http://pulse.me/s/1WT8ye Apparently, an initial draft of the script for Return of the Jedi had Han Solo die on a raid. Lucas saved him for merchandizing reasons--obviously a good choice monetarily. How does this impact the actual story of the Star Wars universe? Lucas clearly thought he was done, so he didn't want to kill a character when he didn't have to. This is just another instance to me where Lucas had no overall plan like he has always purposed. In the words of another Harrison Ford and Lucas character: "I don't know. I'm making it up as I go."
Star Trek episode "Requiem for Methuselah"
"Requiem for Methuselah" Season 3, episode 19. Yet another powerful antagonist, this one an immortal human being that lives in seclusion with fantastic technology (with the ability to shrink the Enterprise from orbit and have it transported to a tabletop). At the beginning, three crewmen have already died from Rigellian fever--I blame these deaths on Dr. McCoy (there's a cure out there and you don't have it on hand on the flagship of the fleet?). So they have to go to a strange world where their sensors have picked up the apparently rare cure, unbeknownst to them the home of this immortal human now named Flint. One sticky wicket for me: if Flint is "shielded" from sensors and doesn't want to be found, why did he come out to greet the landing party in such a rude manner? Shouldn't he have just left them alone? Flint basically pimps Kirk out to bring out the emotions of his female android (yeah, you read that correctly). We find out that Flint w...
Star Trek episode "I, Mudd"
"I, Mudd" Season 2, episode 8. The return of the infamous Harry Mudd from the first season, the only returning antagonist of the original series. Heaven knows why. I guess the creators of the show could not have omnipotent enemies every week and decide to throw in a bit of levity every now and then. Several interesting aspects of this episode include an android named Mr. Norman who easily infiltrates and overtakes the Enterprise. Disgustingly easy. We find that this world of androids was created by a long-since-gone race from the Andromeda Galaxy. It was also an intriguing solution to defeating the androids. No one dies in this episode. Update 7-29-14: I forgot to mention that Mudd even comes back for another episode in Star Trek: The Animated Series. So that's three episodes.
Evil comic book plans that don't quite work out
I'll kill her myself...and blame it on a mythical bandit...yeah...that'll work!
Lars of Mars
A hero from the comics when space adventures were everything. Lars of Mars. So it rhymes. What if his name was Archibald? Or... Should he be Lercury from Mercury? Lenus from Venus? Luranus from Uranus? Or maybe just Loon from the Moon??
Who's for capes? I think we should bring capes back! I want a cape!
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Amy, can I please get this Boba Fett rare figure, the L Slot Rocket Firing prototype? It's only $27,999 at auction.....
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Star Trek episode "Balance of Power"
"Balance of Terror" Season 1, episode 14. One of the best episodes ever. The first Romulan episode, with Mark Lenard playing the Romulan captain well before we see him playing Sarek, Spock's father, later. The chess game he plays with Kirk is fantastic, a definite inspiration for the starship battle in Wrath of Khan. Throughout the episode, the Enterprise takes "22 casualties" but we find out that only one man has died: Tomlinson, the would-be groom before the action. This is in the top ten best Star Trek episodes, throughout any of the incarnations of the franchise. Just watch and enjoy. Nuff said.
Star Trek episode "Spock's Brain"
"Spock's Brain" Season 3, episode 1. You know, for an episode cheesily entitled "Spock's Brain" it is a really good one. Aliens steal Spock's brain! Yet they leave his body...that's an oddity. Scotty talks about the ion propulsion of the alien ship being advanced. "They could teach us a thing or two." The alien, an unassuming beautiful woman, transports to the Enterprise and with the touch of a couple buttons on a device on her wrist, she completely incapacitates the entire crew, even those on other decks. More super-advanced technology that gets forgotten about in Trek-time. Then she steals Spock's brain! Kirk hunts down the aliens and finds an advanced civilization that apparently needs a strong brain to run the city. The inhabitants know nothing. The Builders of the place and their medical knowledge--who are they? Where did they come from? go? It's another one of those themes of whether or not paradise is having someone or s...
Star Trek commentary
Back in 2008, with just my laptop before Netflix streaming was big in my life, I watched Evert episode of the original series of Star Trek and blogged about it. Part of it was to make sure I had seen every single episode. Part of it was to discuss, hopefully, with people who had seen and loved all this before. Truth of the matter is that it was for my own exploration into why a geek like myself loves this stuff. Most of it is bad, if not downright pitiful. And this is from a guy who loves Star Trek. Some is plain old good fiction. However, the really good stuff is just really good. I think that's what makes me hold on even through the garbage. When it is good, it is the best stuff I have encountered. So here, divided up by episodes, are my 2008 commentaries on the original series of Star Trek. Some are short--sometimes not much really needs to be said. And the episode numbers are those given to them by the CBS website at that time.
Star Trek episode "Metamorphosis"
"Metamorphosis" Season 2, episode 9. In a shuttlecraft, cut short of their mission, Commissioner Headford is sick. She yells at McCoy about "the inefficiency of the medical branch of Starfleet." The funny part is that she is quite right in being pissed off because she didn't get an inoculation for a disease McCoy says is so rare that contracting it is "billions to one." How can you not be inoculated? What, were they trying to save a few bucks? Then they are accosted by some "thing" again, some kind of ionized cloud that takes them off course and makes them land on an asteroid with a breathable atmosphere. Isn't it amazing how many bad things happen from "ionized" clouds or storms? On the surface of the asteroid they find none other than Zephram Cochran, discoverer of the space warp. He knew Spock was a Vulcan, making that sync with Star Trek: First Contact. The Companion, the ionized cloud, saved his life and rejuvenated him....
How to watch most movies on Roku without ads
I like bad old movies. I don't know why. I don't have to think, I can do something else, and I just generally get a kick out of how bad some old movies are. Lots of movies are now in the public domain. That's free to you and me. I have Roku, simply a fantastic invention that would be worth five times the cost of its initial purchase. I pay for Netflix, Amazon, and Crunchyroll. Worth twice what I would pay for cable. Yet sometimes I like bad TV. I installed some of those channels like ADC (now Tubi TV), So I started watching a show on Retro SciFi channel. Why aren't they honest and just say Public Domain science fiction. They even run out of SciFi and have to fill it in with other drama and noir PD movies. I tried to watch Torture Ship, based on a Jack London story. The feed kept stopping on me. Yes, it picks up where I left off but it is very irritating to keep pressing play every fifteen seconds. Yes, I restarted Roku but it kept doing it. I had to start another mov...