Hey everybody, DJRM here with something that I may or may not do again in the future. I am going to present you with a book review.
The HBO series Game of Thrones begins this Sunday. Last night I finished reading the book it is based on A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin the first book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series.
I will do my best to keep this review as spoiler free as possible for those who have not yet read the book.
To begin with, I liked A Game of Thrones. It kept me interested throughout. I don't want to say it is a real page turner but it is a real page turner. Seriously often over the last few days when I should have been getting to sleep, working on my own writing or making dinner I was instead reading this book.
There are some great characters in the world George RR Martin has crafted. There are some great locations and landscapes that are grand in the tradition of fantasy and also surprisingly grounded in reality. It is a great book. If I am going to talk about anything really it will have to be the books flaws.
As I said there are many great and interesting characters in this world but there are also some annoying ones. The Stark family are the main characters of the first book but at times I found them to be kind of irritating. Except for Arya Stark. Arya Stark was awesome. I think if I say too much I might give something away so I will just say that at times lead character Ned Stark got on my nerves. Its like I wanted to reach into the book and slap him and say "wake up you moron." At times it seemed almost like the author was going out of his way to make Sansa Stark annoying. The main bad guys of the story are the Lannister family but the only one whose point of view we ever see is the dwarf Tyrion Lannister. He is an interesting character and he does have some of the best lines. People talk about the shades of gray in the story but most of the Lannisters are presented as straight up villians with no real room to sympathize with any of them.
Before I read A Game of Thrones I heard a lot of talk about how they can't say too much because they don't want to spoil all the unexpected surprises. There were plenty of unexpected turns in the story but I can't say I really found any of them that surprising. A was able to predict almost every "shocking" reveal in the story long before it was spelled out on the page. I think most people would be able to figure them out as well. All the clues are there to be put together.
In closing I would like to say that A Game of Thrones is a good book and George R.R. Martin is a brilliant writer. I think at some point I will pick up the next book A Clash of Kings. Mostly because I want to know if any of the more assholish characters are ever going to get any comeuppance.
Something interesting happened recently. I started using deviantART. http://www.deviantart.com/ You may be famliar with it.
Anyway I entered a writing contest to come up with a manga style comic idea. Then I won the contest. Most of the prizes consist of people doing character art for it and maybe even producing some pages of story. I entered with this story I have called Dragon Spirit. I originally concieved it as a sort of parody of shonen manga boy hero type stories. But not a comedy parody, parody does not always have to be funny, you literary types should know what I am talking about.
Some of the prizes were deviantART points that you can use to buy stuff in the store or commission artists. I didn't notice it until the prize had been sent that one of the prize givers was none other than Vitaly S. Alexius the person who makes Romantically Apocalyptic. http://alexiuss.deviantart.com/gallery/26168220 It feels like The Captain himself gave me something. It was just some deviantART points but still it felt kind of neat considering that I had just learned about Romantically Apocalyptic on this very blog and then won a contest with prizes from its artist without even realizing it. http://alexiuss.deviantart.com/#/d3acvkw
I just thought I would share this with you all. Soon I may post again with something more relevantly nerdy to our cause.
I just made a mission statement video for myself and I want to share it with all of you here. I am still new to the Tao of Scoot so I think I will add increasing my activity here to my list along with all of the things in this video.
This video also happens to be my contest entry for the TR nerd years resolution contest.
But there are still a few things I want to say about SG-U and this seems like the best place to go on about it.
Let me start by saying that I have watched Stargate Universe and it had some good episodes that I enjoyed but for the most part I do not think it is a vey good show. There are a number of reasons why.
First of all this show does not know how to throw a punch. A lot of critics like to call SG-U "battlestar galactica lite" and they have a point. It tries to be all grim and hard like BSG was without any of the dramatic or emotional impact. BSG was a show that was never afraid to punch the audience in the gut with unexpexted events. It was never afraid to do horrible things to the characters. And I don't just mean killing them off. Yes BSG killed off characters but it also had many characters survive the horrors and live on to deal with the consequences. In SG-U there are no consequences. More than once they had episodes end with some dramatic cliffhanger with characters stranded on alien worlds with no hope of rescue. They did this three times throughout the show. And every time the characters came back safe and sound as a result of some off screen deus ex machina. Every time there is a crisis or they need something to survive they find it, usually in the last five minutes, kind of like what used to happen on Star Trek Voyager, yeah I went there.
The biggest problem with Stargate Universe is really the characters. Now I do not really blame any of the actors on the show, they do not have much to work with. Lets go down the list of characters so you can get a better idea of what I am talking about.
First you have Brian J Smith as generic-heroic-soldier-guy
Then you have Aliana Huffman as generic-compassionatte-doctor
And there is also Elyse Levesque as generic-pretty-girl
And lets not forget David Blue as generic-nerd-genius
I think you get the idea. And you may disagree with me. But I am willing to admit that SG-U had some compelling characters. The most obvious one being Robert Carlyle's Dr. Nicholas Rush.
Rush is an interesting and compelling character and I wanted to see what would happen next with him from week to week. But he was pretty much the only character I was curious about. But there was also a problem with him. In keeping with the "BSG lite" theme it felt like the original purpose for creating the Rush character was to have a new Baltar. The Stargate franchise does not need a Baltar. No one needs a new Baltar. Baltar was a BSG character and that show is over now. They spent too much time trying to make Rush into a new Baltar instead of letting him be his own character. When he was his own character he has good episodes and the audience was able to sympathize with him. When they tried to make him Baltar he was a pointless psuedo villian.
You know who was not a compelling character, Col. Everett Young played by Louis Ferreira. I don't think this was the writers intention but at some point Col. Young became the shows heroic lead character and he was a poor excuse for one. I mean really if you look back at the show and all the things he did the guy is kind of an asshole. Which leads me to Eli. Now I know what I said before but I do think Eli is a likable character and from what I hear actor David Blue is a great guy. But there is so much that could have been done with Eli that was not. Eli helped Col. Young spy on Rush and then helped him cover up his plot to leave Rush to die on an alien planet and yet they never gave David Blue the opportunity to play out any kind or real dramatic moral dilemma. Not to mention all the other things they do to Eli. His mother has HIV, the girl he likes is screwing a better looking guy and he is caught in the middle of the power struggle between Rush and Young. By the end of season one Eli should have been ready for a nervous breakdown. And that is not even mentioning some of the crap that happened to him in season two, more on that later. Is he really such a resilient individual? I think not. I think the writers have no idea how to handle character development and real human drama.
Speaking of drama there is one character I feel the need to mention. That is Julia Benson's Lt. Vanessa James.
The most shocking thing about this character is that SHE IS STILL ALIVE. No wait please here me out on this. Lets be totally honest, characters like her exist so they can be killed off later to gain unearned sympathy from the audience. I know that is not fair and I mean no disrespect to actress Julia Benson but Lt. James is generic-emotional-female-character in the end. The most unexpected thing they ever did on SG-U was not kill her off. But that does not mean the show is incapable of falling into that generic storytelling trap. Which brings me to my next point.
Julie McNiven
The moment I saw her on SG-U as the Lucian alliance girl Ginn I remembered her from her role as Anna on Supernatural, and I knew that poor girl was going to die. I mean did anybody who watches SG-U seriously not see that coming? It was obvious she was doomed. I mean come on, Simeon was played by Robert Knepper. I have nothing against Robert Knepper, he is good at what he does, and what he does best is play evil bastards. Now I am all for killing off characters if it serves the story. In this case it was useful for one episodes worth of drama. They tried to drag it out but failed because the character was not nearly established enough for her death to really matter even when you take into account the semi relationship with Eli. The real victim here is the audience, and Julie McNiven, it has got to suck to keep getting killed off shows.
The last problem I want to talk about are all of the wasted resources they have on Stargate Universe. The first one being actress Ming-Na as Camile Wray.
She is a good actress and Camile Wray is a good character with a lot of potential for drama and development, but at some point they started to put her on the second tier in favor of playing up Dr. Rush and Col. Young more. Even Eli gets more character face time than her anymore. And there is the simple fact that she is a very pretty lady. There are a lot of very pretty ladies on Stargate Universe and they continue to fail to take full advantage of that.
Battlestar Galactica was a great show for many reasons. The fact that they had a number of attractive women in the cast and most of them appeared in some state of undress once in a while did not hurt. Whatever flaws Caprica may have it was never afraid to play dress up with star Alessandra Torressani. The same can be said for Star Trek Enterprise which never had a problem with making Jolene Blaylock strip down to boost ratings. Stargate Universe did not call upon the resources of its female cast members nearly as much as it could have.
Julia Benson has a very impressive bustline. I want to take a moment to apologize to all women everywhere. I do not mean to be sexist but ther truth is Stargate Universe was not good enough to get by on its own merits. Maybe breasts were not the answer but it could not have hurt to try.
Now onto another matter, Elyse Levesque who plays Chloe Armstong AKA generic-pretty-girl character. for most of the first season Chloe did not do anything. She got kidnapped by aliens one time but then she got back to the ship safe and sound and went back to doing nothing until it turned out the aliens were using her brain to spy on the Destiny and learn its secrets. Wait what? They actually did something that sounds cool and interesting with her character? Thats amazing. Oh wait, as usual it was only good for one episodes worth of drama and then she spent the rest of the season in a room doing space math except when they needed her as a plot device. Take a look at Elyse Levesque.
The best thing the writers could come up with for her to do was sit in a room and do space math. Seriously.
Well I better wrap this up before I talk myself into a corner or offend someone. Although I have probably already done both. To be honest this is probably not the last word I will have on Stargate Universe. No this calls for more than a blog post. This calls for a video. And it will be done whenever the hell I feel like it. And it will be something similair to this.
DJRM here, I'm back with... well more of the same stuff as before. I made a playlist of all the Rogue Talk videos I have made so far. I hope this works. I've never tried to embed a whole playlist before and I'm not sure how it will look.
As you watch the exploits of Ragnal and Kitzer you may begin to think that one is the "crazy one" and the other is the "sane one". But if you look closely you will realize that there is no "sane one".
Scoot invited me to be a contributor here with permission to post my own work for you all to see so I thought I should get on with that.
I felt this was appropriate what with the launch of World of Warcraft Cataclysm at midnight tonight. There are several more Rogue Talk installments on YouTube with more to come in the near future along with other work.
