TV Tuesdays Free Talk

ATLANTA IS BACK! It feels like its been a lifetime. I just finished the first episode and its amazing. There isn't anything like this on TV, really.

I now realize that I never really watched Star Trek: The Original Series. I mean, I caught reruns on network TV, and did watch some of the most popular episodes, but my main contact with the franchise was from TNG forward.

I'm now watching the second season (skipped the first, but I'll go back), and some things caught my attention.

• I love how Spock is seemingly the only main Vulcan character to ever behave like you would expect from a Vulcan. After TOS, Vulcans are humans with a frown: highly emotional individuals who merely think they are logical.
• It's great and forward to have a black woman on the bridge, but, despite having many opportunities to do so, Uhura never seems to have anything to contribute, she's never part of the discussion, never solves anything. I'm not trying to "outwoke" a TV show from 1968, but it's hard to ignore...
  • on that note, in Metamorphosis, the crew has no trouble accepting that a man can have a romantic relationship with an energy being, only for Kirk to reinforce that gender is an absolute universal constant. The energy being proves to be feminine, if that makes any sense... Again, I don't wanna be too critical, it's 1968 network TV.
• Seminude Uhura is quite something, and peak Shatner makes me question my sexuality :P
• I hate the HD remaster, but it does improve some shots. The performances are certainly enhanced, specially on closeups.
• Since the lights were staged for standard video, on HD every actor and object casts multiple sharp, ugly, extremely visible shadows on the set. It can get quite jarring.
• I, Mudd (a direct reference to Asimov's I Robot) feels like an antecessor to the Borg.
• Mirror, Mirror is possibly the origin to Star Trek's Mirror universe, which appears prominently on TNG, DS9, and Discovery.

I'm really happy with the show, which I now realize introduced many concepts which were explored by future movies and series.

It's great to fill this gap in my knowledge.

I started reading The Witcher books, and decided to go back to the show after finishing the short stories, because they're mostly what the first two seasons are pulling from. On re-watching the first season, it felt like a completely different show than I'd first watched two years ago, and I was amazed at how much they managed to keep from the book, and how much they rebuilt for the show (adapting the story for the "current" show timeline, making some characters say other things, etc). I also feel like there was a bit left unclear in the show relative to the stories (Philippa Erhart, the spy owl/mage comes to mind), but on the whole I think it's a great adaptation of some frankly great books. I was surprised at how much of the original humor was retained, because I oddly don't remember it from my first watch, but seemed to catch it all on this comparison run.

Anyone else watching American Song Contest? They're not showing it live here in Norway (because of the time zones), but they've given it a very good Saturday time slot on the most popular TV channel.

The editing is slightly weird, in that they've cut away not only the advertisements, but even all references to ads, so the hosts are often cut off mid-sentence. The hosts by the way are Snoop Dog and Kelly Clarkson, and there are some big names among the contestants too. Michael Bolton performed in the first qualifiers for his home state Connecticut.

The songs were a good variety of genres, and the performances some variety of quality. There were a few songs I really liked, and some I didn't really like. A couple were almost Eurovision-levels over the top performances.

Overall, the first qualifier left a good impression, and I'll be following the competition over the coming weeks.