A. I. Who And Other Stories

Someone sent me a link to something that has been causing some concern within the Doctor Who fan circles – a fan-made episode of Doctor Who that was crafted entirely with AI. It opens with David Tennant’s Doctor on the verge of regeneration and turning into a completely AI-Generated actor named John War or something like that.

I only caught glimpses of it here and there before shutting the video off and making a note to watch it later… only to discover that the video had been taken down. From what little I’ve seen, this AI thing may have done a better Doctor Who story than anything to come out of Marble Mouth Davies’ second stint in the Who chair.

If you find that response concerning, you should… and I can say that just from watching a few minutes of clip here and there.

Yeah… we might as well have THAT talk, too. Why not?

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Much Adieu About Nothing

Source: https://geektyrant.com/news/disney-pulls-the-plug-on-its-power-rangers-series-over-reported-budget-issues

We haven’t touched on this ’round these parts because I didn’t think it was worth talking about. And, really, what is there to say? Reports of Disney’s interest in developing a Power Rangers show lead to periods of silence before last month’s report that Disney backed away due to budgetary concerns. Is there any real surprise that this wouldn’t hold water?

Disney had dropped Doctor Who shortly after that run was completed. What made anyone think that they were going to go from spending money on one sci-fi property to spending money on another sci-fi property with a relatively smaller footprint? Not to mention that Disney, once upon a time, had Power Rangers as an intellectual property and largely treated as an afterthought before selling it back to Saban. If the Disney of old – long before they owned Marvel, Star Wars, 20th Century Fox, and other things – didn’t want to give Power Rangers the time of day, what made anyone think things were going to be different the second go-around?

As much as people want to believe otherwise, Power Rangers is this extremely niche thing that can never be anything more than what it is. They tried to turn it into broody teen angst superhero film almost a decade ago and not enough people cared enough for them to develop a sequel, during the days when everyone and their grandmothers thought that they could launch a cinematic universe full of puppy dogs and kitty kats. Turning it into generic superhero fare isn’t gonna work because that’s not what it is.

Developing a new PR series that isn’t just splicing in old Sentai footage for the action bits and building everything around that is not an easy process. At the same time, you can’t just do what the old show did and call it a reboot. If that were the case, there wouldn’t have been any reason to cancel the original run. I hate to say it, but as it is, the only sustainable means of getting new PR stories is through the ongoing comic books… and even those tend to be hit and miss.

I guess the wait continues… though I can’t imagine there be any solid movement towards a new show any time soon…

Should I go back to fanfiction? Has it come to that?

Eh.

Later.

TNA Bound For Glory 2015

Am I being an asshole for reusing the banner I whipped up for this show a decade ago when I did the musings for this thing shortly after watching it? Probably – especially considering both guys are in better states of mind nowadays than they were back then… but on the other hand, it’s pretty much the perfect picture for the state of TNA at the time of this particular piece of programming.

My original thoughts can be found here. A lot of this musings (especially for the early portion of the program where I really have nothing new to add) will just be copied-and-pasted from the original post, but there is enough new stuff towards the end that it’s not a complete cop-out… only a partial one.

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This Day In History… WCW Shitcans Steve Austin

September 15th, 1995 would be the day when Eric Bischoff called Steve Austin to tell him know that he was being fired from WCW. Austin, who had been nursing a tricep injury suffered during a recent tour in Japan, would subsequently make a brief stop at ECW before eventually signing with the World Wrestling Federation. Not sure what happened to that guy, but I’m sure he did okay.

Gotta keep engaged somehow, brother.

Finally… Some Good Fucking Star Trek

It took us a while, but Strange New Worlds finally gave us compelling Star Trek last week with its “Orders Of Magnitude” episode.

The premise? James T. Kirk – alleged first officer of the USS Farragut – is back on the Enterprise for reasons and suddenly finds himself as temporary first officer to a badmiral who assumes command on a mission to wipe out a planet while Captain Pike and a handful of crew are on a planet responding to a distress call. Kirk, however, thinks that this mission is not on the up and up because Badmiral is badmouthing his dad for reasons that go unspoiled here and he ends up teaming with brother Sam to find out the truth while also preventing the Enterprise from doing something incredibly bad.

It’s a bit of a cliche plot within classic Star Trek, but fuck that. This episode’s big swing is that it’s going to be an episode of Star Trek. Something that has been severely and painfully lacking this season with maybe one or two exceptions at most, Orders Of Magnitude felt like vintage Trek fare with a new coat of paint. Now did we need this to be another Jim Kirk story when Sam Kirk was right there? No, not when Sam was and still is severely underutilized if we’re being honest – it seems like as soon as we had Jim Kirk cast, we didn’t need Sam anymore and that’s a shame because he’s the more interesting Kirk on this show.

I’ve long since given up on any pretense that this is anything but a TOS origin story… which is partly a lie because I’m thinking this whole exercise is an attempt to sell people on that Year One concept that the showrunners of this thing really, really, REALLY want to make… but I’m not sure who would want that, especially if the numbers for THIS show are fairly weak to the point where they’re not even getting a “full” final season. The really sad thing is that when these writers aren’t playing with themselves coming up with inane concepts such as puppet shows, musical episodes, or soap opera themed shows, they can pull off some decent – not great, but decent – Star Trek storytelling.  I go back and watch some of the earlier episodes… mostly the first season and there was some potential there that this could have been a great show. This was a favorite of mine, early on… but of course, we gotta have BIG SWINGS.

Well, look what happened there, right?

I should be a bit more positive on this post because it’s a good Star Trek show on a series that desperately needed more Star Trek in it, but good Star Trek wasn’t a once in a lifetime moment; it was a regular thing during a season for twenty-plus weeks. Now we’re lucky if we get one of those every two years… eh.

And for the record, no, I still have not watched Academy. Teen drama is not something I’m willing to put up with for the sake of “some” good Star Trek. This franchise has been around for sixty years. I’m not lowering standards of what makes for good, compelling television just because everyone else has.

Only two more episodes of this show before we can all it a season. I’m pretty sure there will be thoughts at the end of it all and then I can cancel my P+ sub. For the best, I suppose.

Rough Week For Sure…

So this past week was pretty rough, I’m not going to lie. Been saddled with a cold for most of it, which killed my voice as well as inflicted me with several migraines of sorts. Not exactly the sort of positive vibe you want in life, but with the help of some fluids and some meds, I’m slowly on the mend and feel like I can get some stuff done without difficulty.

So yeah, in case you didn’t get the memo, I’m putting off videos this week for the sake of recovery, but at the same time, I’m using what time I’ve got to start scripting the video of bad news. I actually did get some dubwork in before the cold session hit hard and part of my delaying that was less to do with recovery and more to do with not wanting a sudden vocal change between chunks. This is a big video and a big discussion I want to engage. If there’s one piece of business that I would like to get solid, it’s this one.

Now the work begins, I guess.

Review #1370 – ReCore: The Definitive Edition (PC)

On the tenth anniversary of Comcept’s other released project, we review the PC port that is supposed to be the definitive edition of that title.

There’s a lot of background notes behind this review, which was largely assembled in two days with only enough footage to go around. Stuff that I had before ended up being lost, so another session was in play, which explains why you have varying levels of footage involved. The bulk of the work was done throughout the day before it eventually (finally) made it to Youtube just before midnight.

This review is a tale of two computers; a mini PC that is barely keeping up with the framerate for this thing and a much bigger computer that can keep up with this thing, but chooses not to. I blame Game Pass, which is what allowed me to play this thing in the first place.

Also worth of mention is that this is the one hundredth video review released for this year, which isn’t even the big milestone review to look forward to.