Blowing Up the Outside World

Consider this.

Sheesh,  so much is going on I'm really falling behind. And tomorrow is the anniversary of Chris Cornell's death. 

So I think I'm going have to pick up the pace a bit for the next couple of weeks just because there's so much information we need to wrap our heads around, so as to get a handle on exactly what's going on all around us in these very, very strange times.

Propaganda in the Classical Sense

Throughout history, cults of all sizes and shapes have created exciting dramas to spread their doctrines to the uninitiated. Many of the same elements we see in comic books, paperback SF and fantasy novels and Hollywood movies were first introduced in these stories, not as entertainment per se, but as literal propaganda, meaning as messages designed to 'propagate the faith'.

Secret Star Trek: "An Outgrowth of The Outer Limits"

Daystar Trek: From Project Vulcan to a projecting Vulcan

This series has taken us from the connections between Star Trek, the flying saucer cult known as the Council of Nine and Esalen, the New Age resort in Big Sur to the dizzying array of connections between Star Trek and the short-lived sci-fi anthology series The Outer Limits. This is no detour. This cuts right to the core of what Star Trek is really all about.  

Secret Star Trek: Playground of the Elementals

Back row: Should've been played by Jasika Nicole,
James van der Kirk, Sylar. Front: Englebert Cabbagepatch

That the team that brought us Fringe also brought us the revised Star Trek is no accident. In fact it was inevitable. Fringe took huge chunks of storyline from The X-Files but it also drew inspiration from a bizarre period in American history when Cold War budgets were financing fringe scientists at Stanford Research Institute, Xerox PARC and other locales in north-central California. 

Secret Star Trek: The Godfather

The connections between the secretive flying saucer/channeling cult known variously as The Council of Nine, Lab-9 or simply The Nine with both Star Trek and the legendary Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California have been known for many years. 

My Ancient Aliens Problem

The controversial History Channel series Ancient Aliens seems to be winding down after four seasons (the fourth has been airing on H2).

Caprica, or The End is Foretold

I've been wracking my brains trying to figure out why Caprica resonates with me in a way that Battlestar Galactica still has not. It's not that I don't think BSG was well-written, well-acted and well-produced - I certainly do. I always admired the show, but it always had the faint taste of medicine for me. 

Caprica, Call of Duty and the Descent into Virtuality

Caprica's Daniel Greystone is an alternate reality version of Jaron Lanier and vice versa. For those of you who don't remember, Lanier - like Greystone - became a techno-celebrity in the early 90s by selling an idea without an application. 

Caprica and the Spi-Fi Ascendency

 

 OK, I need to rinse the rancid taste of Braintree out of my mouth...

A lot of you may have seen this already, but I'm so jazzed on this series I want to make sure the rest of you do as well. This is the prequel to the Battlestar Galactica revamp, but it's grabbed me in a way that BSG still has not (never fear, the missus and I have the first season DVDs and plan to dig into them soon).

SJ/ET/LDS/AAT/SF

The whole Vatican-ET meme we talked about last week seems to be a lot more serious than these jokey news stories let on. A quick Google search on 'Vatican' and 'Extraterrestrial' gave me more than a million hits. Do they know something we don't, or is this all just a diversion on the part of a few eccentric old Jesuits? 

TVOD: (Battle)Stargate Universe

 

 "A Stargate for the rest of us," the headline reads, and so far that seems to be the case. The Stargate movie was a good old-fashioned guilty pleasure, but the two series- SG-1 and Atlantis- strike me as nothing more than elaborate fan fiction or LARP.

BSG-UN-ISS-NJ-UFO

 

On Tuesday, that Day of All Days, cast and crew from Battlestar Galactica turned the United Nations in a high-rent version of Dragon*Con. True to form, Guinan herself moderated while wearing an extremely odd scarf decorated with what looks like alien skulls.

Inner Space Capsule

First of all, let me apologize for the extremely infrequent updates here. I've been working seven days a week, anywhere from 12 to 17 hours a day. Whatever downtime I've had has been spent with my family. This has been a very challenging year, given the workload and the absolutely dreadful weather we had here over the summer.