Crime Traveller: Very bad.

finished watching 'Crime Traveller'
boring, pointless, depressing, annoying, and frequently implausible in ways nothing to do with their time travel gimmick. Plus the time travel gimmick itself isn't internally consistent.
They set up a story where you can't change time, but you can interact with it. You can be history but you can't change history. Predestination in a little loop.
What the hell was the point?
and then the thing with the vanishing writing without the bits of paper themselves vanishing, or the vanishing large physical changes (wounds) without the vanishing small physical changes (memories).
It just doesn't *work*

Doctor Who style time travel might be completely bizarre and untidy, but you can make a million stories with it.

Crime Traveller didn't manage 8 without repeating the basics over and over and over. I mean theres only so many times you can frame yourself for a crime, you know?

The writers just set themselves up with a premise that goes nowhere.

A machine that let you *view* the past, say as an incorporeal entity, without being able to interact with it physically, would actually have had more stories in it, methinks.

One where its all like the end of the Bill & Ted movies where you go back and do the things that you were affected by the first time through ... B&T used it for a joke, and because plot wasn't really their strong point, and it only sort of worked then. Using it as the centre of the plot? Bad.

/rant


I could start a whole other rant about how amazingly un-feminist it is, but that would be loud and annoying.

I'm just going to go sell the DVDs on Amazon now.

Highlander season 5: Prophecy

aka When Bad Fanfic Becomes Canon!

urgh. Shiny Mary Sue lady, who turns out to be all ancient and powerful and having this connection to Mac we've never heard of before. Kissing a 13 year old. Using a combination of sex and superstition to manipulate people. Messing with Duncan's head and making people hallucinate. I *really* don't like her.

And the plot! It so very didn't make sense. Bad guy gets Mac chained up and at his mercy and then... wanders off??? The writers really weren't even *trying* to make that make sense.

Also, *too much magic*. Too much *really pointless* magic. It took 400 years and a prophecy to think of *wearing earplugs* to stop the magic Voice???

The Voice itself would be more interesting if it had more limits. It isn't terrible though. I could live with that.

And the hallucinations we've seen before, though not taken to this level.

But just the Voice and the illusions and the prophecy all together, total garbage that doesn't belong in Highlander *and* doesn't make sense.

BORING!



If we read this as 'Cassandra believes in the prophecy' then she's merely very stupid, weak and ineffectual. I personally read it as 'prophecy is recipe, and witch woman is doing the cooking'. She sets up the ingredients, the circumstances, makes Mac into her weapon. Which makes her powerful, but twisty and manipulative and all kinds of annoying.


So I just emphatically do not like this episode.

Highlander season 5: End of Innocence

Richie! :)
Being kind of a jerk
along with everyone else.

Mac pushing Joe around
and Joe letting him and then being unhelpful at Richie
and *then* changing his mind
and all a big mess.


This was not anyone's finest hour.

But it was all entirely plausible and understandable.


Richie was having nightmares every time we saw him sleep. Probably had been for months. This is a guy who now doesn't believe there is any such thing as safe. So what to do? 'There can be only one'. Try to be the one. Play the Game.
Unpleasant, but understandable. Feeling like he hasn't any choice. If the Game is a necessity, play it to win.

There's more subtle ways to do that, but Richie tries the ass kicking approach.

And breaks his sword.
Mac with that fake newbie Immortal said the sword would have lasted if she had made it part of herself.
Was that sword part of Richie?
At the time he's trying to make it all of him.
Imbalance. First lesson - off balance, bad.

Sword breaks because Richie isn't okay. Not whole inside himself.

I like the new sword better. I always felt it suited him better. Plus I just like the shape and the pattern. Its on my shortlist of things to get a tattoo of, if I ever get around to getting another one. (Actually I know I want a sword, but latest idea is to make it a buddhist one, sword of insight type thing. Buddhist swords mean neat things, and have flames on the end. But so do lots of other systems. ANYways, /detour)


Joe is trying to figure out how to be a friend and a Watcher, and Mac keeps telling him he can't be both, so he chooses friendship and leaves the Watchers. That has style. Just his timing was a little awkward for Richie. He's Mac's friend first, and Richie's second, is what it ends up being.


Mac is kind of clunky here. But he gets there in the end. 'Not telling, asking'. And that works. Not least because its kind of new.


Flashbacks, fight to live not live to fight. Fit together fairly well.
Writers weren't half trying to get that guy to mean a lot in a couple of minutes. Fit him into the Teacher line, give him some wise words, make him basically cheerful. And then when he begs for his life it doesn't look like cowardice so much, because he already said he just likes living a lot.


Breaking into the museum to get a sword, makes sense. Breaking into one of the glass displays (setting the alarm off) and trying (and failing) to pull one out of a stone? Not so much making sense when they had swords apparently sitting around on racks in the open. That one not set up so very well.

Richie is no Arthur. What was the test the sword was for? Being King, or some personal qualities thing?


Richie's story continues interesting, with the continued inner conflict bit. And the change and progress. And Richie playing out what he's been taught, and shown, which sort of... highlights how Mac acts, and what he has said, and the differences.

Mac doesn't kill Richie for the headhunting phase. And not just because its Richie. That kind of combat is what they do. When he killed that guy who was hunting even the newbies, Mac felt guilty about it. He offered to let the guy in this ep walk away if it ended there. Mac doesn't consider playing the Game, fighting other Immortals to the death simply because they exist, to fit his definition of evil, or worthy of death. Because There Can Be Only One. If you believe it, live by it, that leads to unpleasant ends.

But Richie changes course by the end of the episode, because it didn't suit him, and now he feels that bit less afraid of Mac, maybe there's another way. So he starts looking.

Is interesting.

Reasons I love Blue Beetle & Booster Gold

Because they're just regular guys with a few cool toys
they break as easy as anyone
but they still go out there and put their neck on the line.

They screwed up once, but they decided to do better.

They've been dead, in comas, crippled, chopped into parts, and it *doesn't stop them*.

They aren't like the Bats, ruled by angst.

They're just a couple of guys who go out there and save the world a lot, together.

( Read more... )

They weren't born to this. No great power, no invulnerability, no being chosen by the gods. They *chose*. And every single time they could choose otherwise, get out and stay out, be regular guys instead - they choose to be heroes. Even if it's going to cost them everything. Again. They know the stakes, and they choose.


Superman, Wonder Woman, all those born to power types, always much less interesting to me. Most of us will never have their kind of choices. But can we choose to wear blue and fight crime, with a partner, as part of a team? Oh yes. So Blue & Gold forever, say I.