Month: January 2005

Truth be told, I usually come up with the titles for my entries before I actually write them, not the other way around. That being said, let’s go to the switches: two revivals which are followups to miniseries that have Asian American flavor.

Battlestar Galactica (the SciFi reimaging): I generally like it, as long as you don’t try to read in too much from the original series. Every character is bright, but eclipsing a darker side. Grace Park, as the green lieutenant Boomer (a sidekick’s sidekick part in the original series), is developing a serious Dark Side that will dominate the rest of series. But stop with the Blair Witch camera motion, jeez! You’re making me dizzy.

Iron Chef America – the Series: This is a much better intepretation of the Japanese franchise than the abortive Iron Chef USA. The Chairman is flamboyant but doesn’t get in the way, Alton Brown is much more capable of food intepretation, and these chefs actually cook and do some explaining of their techniques. I think that Bobby Flay should have lost this week’s battle, though.

The wardrobe: I finally broke down and bought a tuxedo. I don’t know if this is a true sign of adulthood, but I guess I’m acutally going to enough of these black tie things that I need one. P– and I went to a cheap place on 4th Avenue and 63rd Street in Brooklyn called S & B Warehouse.

Finally watched it, so I thought I’d mention it. This week’s episode “Daedalus” – curiously interesting. It felt like the way good standalone episodes were done with “Star Trek: the Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine” – subtle, gripping, and thoughtful. References to previous character development (T’Pol’s dealing with the loss of her mother and becoming a better Vulcan; Trip’s loss of his sister; Capt. Archer’s loss of his father and hero worship of Zephraim Cochrane, the inventor of warp drive spaceships) weren’t beating you on the head. And, the Big Three carried off good acting in demonstrating their characters’ reactions – Trip’s pissed off that Archer would endanger the crew to help Dr. Emory Erickson, the inventor of the transporter; Archer pissed off with Emory for deceiving him; everybody but Emory feeling bad about the dead ensign of the week. Etc.

See, Emory’s the “Daedalus” – an ingenius engineer/inventor who lost his son to his invention’s accident. Emory believes that he could rescue his son/research assistant from subspace limbo, even if it means deceiving Archer, the son of Emory’s dear friend and a semi-godson.

Archer, who has his own issues with loss of family and making dubious decisions (even if for the right reasons), decides to be loyal to his close family friends, even if it means ignoring his close shipmates (Trip and T’Pol couldn’t get it through to him that putting the ship in harm’s way isn’t a good idea to save the life of one person, particularly when Ensign of the Week died really badly;then again, Archer is a stubborn twit, whose anger scenes which persuasive this week. I also liked his scenes of being the Good Friend to Emory’s daughter, Danica, who – like her brother – was a childhood playmate. Archer felt she belonged in a starship, not as her father’s caretaker; and she had strong moral objections to her father’s actions, even if his emotional pain was really sad stuff – Daedelus indeed). Oh, and Dr. Phlox did a nice job too with his little scenes (Star Trek chief medical officers are nice people to have as doctors, I’d think). Nice episode all around; thumbs up.