SG-1 and P90s

I always wondered a bit how SG-1 ended up switching to the P90, as opposed to you know, an M4 style carbine. Had figured it was just the cool space aged thing at the time, and I suppose the P90 kind of was back then.

For a while now, I’ve resisted Disney+. Often, just barely. I kind of recognized immediately when it launched: if my mother had been alive there would have been no choice in the matter from the beginning. With Star Wars and Marvel joining the house of mouse, that beelines it straight into my interests. I already grew up in front of Disney’s content library being the son of Disney fanatic. Throwing in the franchises that most interest me: that just makes a dangerous recipe for a streaming service, lol.

The way I’ve largely resisted is the notion that I have enough of my budget devoted to such subscriptions, and don’t need another. Less about the cost, more about the principal.

And then I notice how cheaply this can expand my existing Hulu package….and darn it.

For bonus points, not only does this allow me to catch up on recent SW/MCU series, it has quite the back catalog. Including filling in the gaps in my Blu-ray collection. Seeing the back catalog has the old ewoks movies and Spiderman and His Amazing Friends series from the ’80s listed, somehow just makes me feel old more than tempted. But I’m pretty sure we’ve long since passed the point of “Pass the popcorn”. Sigh.

Starting A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix, I’m pleasantly surprised to see Joan Cusack pop up as Justice Strauss.

At first it was hard to place her with that silly wig, but both the voice and the face were sticking out enough that I had to look up the cast. That she’s the voice of Toy Story’s Jessie explains why the voice jabbed me in the face as very familiar. While I’ve seen more than a few of her films countless times over the years, oddly the part I most remember seeing her in is as Robin Williams’ quirky sister in the film Toys. A silly little movie perhaps few remember today, but one I enjoyed quite a bit growing up.

Watching Day of the Dove over a batch of popcorn, I kind of think this is one of the episode types that The Original Series did rather well.

The Enterprise is lured to a world where it seems a human colony has vanished without a trace, as a damaged Klingon battle cruiser perceives the Federation having attacked them in an act of war. Rapidly it devolves into a battle for control of the ship, and anything that could draw it to a swift conclusion is blotted out by an alien being pulling their collective strings.

Despite the rather swashbuckling nature of the original Star Trek, which was a rather apt nature if you recall popular TV from the period, Kirk and his crew still represent a fairly enlightened humanity. One that fortunately, many of today’s viewers likely have more in common with than our ancestors: who grew up watching Star Trek, and the world they lived in.

When Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles originally aired, I didn’t even learn of its existence until some years later. So, I pretty much missed the entire thing. Finding that Amazon’s streaming stuff has it on IMDb with ads, I’m finding it well worth the wait.

It’s also a bit refreshing, given how the films have evolved.

Settling in and watching Enterprise, S1E3 kind of tickles my nature.

Getting ready to board an obviously damaged, unresponsive vessel: Lt. Reed is inclined to break out the heavy rifles, and Capt. Archer surmises that the phrase pistols are sufficient. Considering the unknown situation aboard the other ship: it would make more sense to have Reed with a rifle, and keep the pistols for the rest: light enough to be non threatening if they encounter survivors, and more punch in case things go sour.

Issuing hand phasers and tricoders to away teams as a precaution is probably one of Star Fleet’s saner SOPs, given the wide range of situations Star Fleet personnel are exposed to. But heavy weapons are actually a pretty rare sight in Star Trek despite the amount of shooting that goes on. I don’t really think there were enough times rifles appeared in TOS to remember the 23rd century phaser rifle more than superficially. In the 24th century, it was largely due to the Borg threat and Dominion war that we really see the Type-IIIs. Actually, it’s kind of comforting that the next iteration made it into Voyager’s armories, lol. Not sure if any real figures were ever given for easier weapons, but the Federation Type-IIs popular in the 24th century probably had more destructive potential than anyone could hope to leverage at the longer distances found planet side.

By contrast the MACO unit attached to Enterprise after the Xindi incident is very abnormal by Star Trek norms. But I suppose even the precursors of the Federation eventually had to go down that route.

Watching the end of Lost in Space season 2, I can’t help but think it’s been a great second season. Given much less subterfuge and mystery than the first season, it has a lot more focus than the first thanks to the characters having been developed, and the family solidified over the first season.

As someone who would like to believe there’s some bit of good in everyone, I rather liked Dr. Smith’s development over the season—and the robot’s choice of word. But perhaps the best, is John’s last words to his daughter Judy, as the season marches to its conclusion: “You’ll figure it out.” Because honestly, that’s how life works.

And bless the engineer who designed the corridors aboard the Resolute big enough for a Charriot to speed through, lol.

10 Best Tsundere Characters In Anime, Ranked

Not a bad list, IMHO, and mostly from series worth watching.

Most of the characters also have particularly strong relationships and interactions with others, rather than just being your typical tsundere fodder.

Kirisaki Chitoge and Alaska Tiga in characters that I’ll probably remember well beyond how long I remember their respective series, lol.

Chitoge and Raku’s largely antagonistic relationship is what really makes Nisekoi worth watching, and cackling at. Meanwhile the plot stretched over two seasons might be reason to smack people upside the head. Incidents such as the locket search early in the series, and the great mother problem towards the end, are very telling of the characters’ respective natures. I find it kinda awesome how much those moments really tell about them, despite the hilarious antagonism, lol. Combined with her personality, which is pretty awesome. One of the few characters that got a footnote in my anime worth remembering, as being a character quite worth the remembering.

While I’m not a big fan of drama, Toradora! is kind of hard to forget. Taiga and Ryuji both have a few screws loose, and their undeniable partnership is pretty fricken amazing. As oddballs, more than a few good jokes are also generated along the way. I doubt that most people actually have someone in their life with a relationship like Ryuji and Taiga’s, and those that do are probably better off. Give or take if either of them are tsunderes. Compared to most anime, they also become very well developed characters by the end of the story.

On the flip side, I identify with the Toradora character, Ryuji, far more than most anime characters. So I consider the series even more worth watching than most, lol.

10 Must-Watch Anime Turning 10 In 2020

Not sure if the ratio between on my watch later list for years versus yeah, I’d say watch that; is a good or bad ratio.

Also, this reminds me that I never watched the finale of Maid-sama. That was a surprisingly good comedy.

Watching The Outer Limits – s02e9 – Trial by Fire, I find myself wondering somewhat just what kinds of civilizations we could find out there amongst the stars.

Based on our own civilizations throughout history, I rather think there’s three ways that works out.

In a perfect world, we would probably have a first contact out of Star Trek. But I don’t really have that high a hope for humanity, so I expect our early associations to look more like Avatar or Enemy Mine.

In a way though, I worry that a more likely scenario given how difficult truly foreign beings are, and how fucked up we are, things would turn out more like the Earth-Minbari war in B5. Which could be summarized as a hot head meets cultural differences kicks off the near extimerination of the human race. Except I don’t think the Battle of the Line would turn out so fortuitous, so much as like an ID4 assault ship firing its primary weapon.