Scott's Case Files

Then Came Bronson

I just discovered a show from 1969 - '70 called Then Came Bronson.  It's about a guy who is a reporter in San Francisco who gets a call from the police that a man is about to jump off a bridge and kill himself and is asking for him.  It turns out it's a friend of his and when he gets to the bridge, his friend tells him how he's hit the end of the road but Bronson's has just begun.  With his last words before jumping he wills his motorcycle (a Harley sportster) to Bronson.

Bronson then up and quits his job and travels the US from one place to another, hoping to find himself and maybe someday where the road leads.  Along the way he enters and touches peoples' lives and makes the world a little better place in the process.  Kind of like The Incredible Hulk TV show, but without gamma radiation.

And even though it was made over 30 years ago, they mostly stay away from the fashions and lingo of the day, so that it looks like it could have been filmed in present day (mostly).  Very cool.

The entire series is on YouTube in ten minute segments where I'm slowly working my way through it.  THIS link will start you off - the rest is up to you if you want to watch it.

The Tomorrow People

The Tomorrow People was a British sci-fi television series originally filmed in the '70s, though it enjoyed a fan following in the '80s thanks to Nickelodeon (which is when I saw it).  There was a later attempt to recreate the series in the '90s but it was crap and was nothing near to the original.

It's about a select few young people who are the next step in human evolution and who possess various special abilities: telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis, and others.  Because of this, and what the world would do to them if they were found out, they remained a secretive group throughout the series.  They even had the backing of the Federation - an intergalactic government who is not unfamiliar with the idea of "Tomorrow People" through time and through various lifeforms.  It's this group that gives the technology for the first Earthling Tomorrow Person - John - to build their own secret lair, if you will.  It was the coolest and was the cause of many a Scott flight of fancy.  I wanted a jaunting belt almost as much as I wanted a TARDIS key!

Well, after not thinking of the show for some time (due to the fact that the VHS and DVDs of the series were only available to be played on British machines - no North American viewing).  Well, I looked it up on Amazon.com and...JOYGASM!  There they are in all of their brilliance in all-region DVD format.  It went immediately on my list.  All of them shall be mine...oh, yes...they shall be mine....

Burn Notice

My new favorite show (of the moment, at least) is USA's Burn Notice.  It's about a kind of freelance secret agent named Michael Westen who, in the middle of a job, gets a "burn notice."  Basically, someone in one of the various covert groups out there has proclaimed him untrustworthy or a security risk and he's in essence blacklisted from any and all covert groups.

Without ruining any of the plot for you, they do use a nice plot device to keep him in Miami where the show is based.  He's also cut off from all of the resources that he used to have - money, contacts, and what have you - except for a couple other freelancers that for whatever reasons will associate and work with him.  So he ends up taking whatever private investigator style jobs that he can in order to make a little money and in the meantime try to find out who put the burn notice on them and rectify it...

The show has some pretty neat things going for it...

Voyagers!

When I was a kid, one of my favorite (and short-lived) shows was Voyagers!  The exclamation point is actually part of the title, by the way.  And, as of tomorrow, it will be coming out on DVD!

The show was about a time-traveler who belonged to a temporal organization who traveled through time and space to set things right.  Somehow, history just doesn't work out like it's "supposed" to and it's the job of these travelers to correct those errors.  Phinneas Bogg was a pirate, back in a time when that was popular, and was recruited into this organization. 

His time travel device (a pocket-watch sized device that had a globe-like setting device and red and green lights on it to indicate that time was wrong or right) malfunctions and he ends up in (I believe) 1982 - further ahead than his device is supposed to go.  There he meets Jeffrey Jones, a history savant.  It just so happens that Bogg is a bit deficient in the history department, and Jeffry's dog destroyed his guide book, so he ends up taking the kid along.

And thus the voyage begins!

Smallville Winding Down

I've been a big comic book (thanks to Mom) and sci-fi (thanks to Dad) fan since I was a kid.  So whenever either turns into a television show I'm generally all over it, at least for a look-see.

Smallville has been on for what seems like forever now.  For the uninitiated, Smallville chronicles the life of Superman before he was Superman and growing up in his home town of Smallville, Kansas.

Things were always hit and miss for me with the series.  I enjoyed seeing what went into the making of the figure we recognize as Superman and detested the long strings of episodes where it may as well had nothing to do with his character or even Smallville.  The show can lately be called Lanaville, centering more on Lana Lang and Lex Luthor than Clark Kent or Smallville.  That's fine, but save that stuff for a spin-off or what have you.

I did enjoy the episodes that introduced (and even centered on) other superheroes in the DC Comics mythos like Aquaman, Cyborg, The Green Arrow, The Flash, and others that I'm sure that I've missed.  But by and large, the series is running out of places to grow and just needs to end.  I've come to the point where I just about don't care about the drama which is Clark Kent's love life or his feud with Lex and just want to see him put on a costume, fly around saving people, and be done with it.  I've had enough.

The big theory is that the last few seconds of the Smallville series will be of Clark in his Superman costume flying away.  Let's hope that episode comes soon before they're forcibly canceled...

Needing A Star Trek State Of Mind

One of my favorite bloggers, Wil Wheaton, posted about something that I've given quite a bit of thought to over the years - the Star Trek mindset.  Bear with me a minute here...

Here we are on planet Earth.  As far as we know for absolute positive we're the only sentient life alive in the universe today.  Throughout our history we've carved invisible lines in the ground and called them borders.  We've killed for those invisible lines.  We've killed people with different beliefs than ourselves - we call them infidels and heathens.  We've gone to war over the political systems of other countries for fear of being infected with those ideals.  We still identify each other as "White" and "Black" and elsewise.  We dread Mondays because no matter how interesting our job is, there's something else we'd rather be doing for a living.

Now enter the Star Trek state of mind.  We're just one world amongst thousands - we, as humans, are not the center of the universe and all existence.  We still draw invisible lines but they're drawn over the space of light years (and our end goal is that there be no lines).  Even if you took an hour to study each belief system in the universe, you'd be studying until a nearby star collapsed on itself...so we accept that all belief systems have equal value.  We do fear other political systems, so we draw those invisible lines so that we don't have to fight.  "Race" is recognized as a man-made thing (which it is, for the record) - the color of a person's skin seems insignificant when you interact with people who aren't even bipedal on a daily basis.  We go to work gladly and money doesn't really exist for all intents and purposes - everyone's job is the where they really want to be and they're dedicated to it.

Imagine living in that Star Trek state of mind...

Moon Knight

Ever since I can remember I was a fan of comic books.  My Mother had been a big fan of the Silver Age Superman and one of the first bedtime stories that I can remember her telling me was how Superboy and Lex Luthor met, became best friends, then worst enemies (not quite Smallville, by the way).  My uncle was a big fan of Green Lantern, a hero which remains one of my favorites to this day.  When I was in the hospital as a kid with my broken arm, my Dad brought me Captain America.

Then, as I got older and had allowance to spend I began buying my own comics.  I would go to the local swap-meet to the comic dealer and spend all of my ill-gotten gain.  One hero that I discovered on my own was Moon Knight.  He is kind of the Marvel Universe's answer to Batman, but with a supernatural twist and some other goodies thrown in.

Well, it sounds like Moon Knight is someday relatively soon going to have his own television show!  I got a little joy-gasm when I discovered that.  How cool is that?  Now if the day comes when Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) gets his own movie or show, my life will be complete!

Electra Woman & Dyna Girl!

Any boy who grew up in the '70s has at least one thing that they wouldn't want to forget about that decade - the glamorous, beautiful, and dynamic Electra Woman & Dyna Girl.  Come on, guys, you know we all wanted to grow up to date (etc) either of those babes.  Admit it.  Come clean.

Okay, so they were an even cheaper version of the late '60s TV of Batman and Robin but these were chicks.  Hot chicks.  Chicks with technological devices.  Chicks wearing tight spandex and proud of it.

Just a little reminiscing for you 30-something guys out there.  Check out the opening sequence that I've embedded below!  (And check out the fro on that supervillain!)

Dexter

I'm not sure if the term "anti-hero" could be more aptly applied to any character of fiction better than Dexter.  Dexter is a new show on Showtime (which is based on a series of novels) about a serial killer that kills only serial killers.

From a young age, Dexter's foster father (who is a policeman) sees that he is a sociopath and that he has a need to kill things and that it is only a matter of time before he needs to escalate to humans.  Knowing that Dexter cannot be changed and that he will only get worse, he decides that the best course of action is to get some "good" out of his sickness.  He teaches Dexter that if he must kill, it is best to kill the bad people of the world and only these people.  That tenet becomes "Harry's Code."  He teaches Dexter how to recognize other serial killers like him, how to track them, and how to kill them without leaving any evidence or trace of their passing for the police to find.  It is twisted, certainly, but then again can you imagine unconditional love as unconditional as this?

The best part of Dexter, I think, is watching him try to imitate human emotion.  He is so much of a sociopath that he doesn't really feel anything and every public minute of every day he has to put on a mask of emotion.  Every smile, frown, and tear is a practiced gesture.  He can't connect to people to any degree beyond family, and even that is only an approximation.  Even his girlfriend is a front - she is an emotionally damaged woman who isn't interested in sex or anything emotionally intimate, but if he isn't in a relationship people start to wonder and ask questions.  As Dexter says, he doesn't put on a front to hide how vulnerable he is like a normal person - he puts up a front to hide how vulnerable he isn't.

Gotta Love The Kirk