My 90's and 2000's Experience: Halloween

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for Halloween. As you can see from the title of this post, I was very intentional on when I was going to write it. I'm not going to be super fancy with this post, I'm just gonna talk a little bit about what Halloween was like for me personally growing up in the 90's and 2000's. I did this on my old blog, The Review Basement in 2020 for my now defunct series, Living with Disabilities, but this will be a broader look at it. So, let's get into it.

As many of you know I'm not a big Halloween person. I don't dislike Halloween, it's just not my favourite day of the year. It was different for me growing up because for most of my childhood I couldn't eat anything, so trick or treating never appealed to me the way it would other people. As it is, my parents took us to visit all the grandparents so they could see our costumes. It was the 90's, we didn't have social media and Messenger to send pictures to relatives on and being that it could be expensive to get a roll of film developed, we saved cameras for really special occasions like birthdays and Christmas, or any other time that Nana was over with her camera. 

Not being able to eat also meant that candy and chocolate was pointless for me, so my parents and grandparents had to get creative for treats for me for Halloween. So instead of chocolate or candy, they'd get me books or comics or a VHS tape or a toy. Something that I could have so I wouldn't feel left out since my brother and sister would get candy and chocolate. After 1993 it was a little easier since I could eat things like Aero bars and I could still experience the sensation of eating regular food without worrying about getting fat or things like cholesterol and other nutritional things. 

On the school side of things I actually got into Halloween a little bit more. We were allowed to wear our costumes in the afternoon throughout elementary school, as we'd have the class Halloween party that afternoon, or the afternoon closest to Halloween if Halloween was on a weekend that year. I had a pretty decent variety of costumes. Commander Riker, Batman, a Ninja Turtle, Robin, and Darth Vader were all characters I dressed up as. But for the most part, aside from the one year we went trick or treating in my neighbourhood, Halloween consisted of me listening to spooky songs on the radio. MAJIC 100, one of the local radio stations that was a staple in my house at the time, had an entire evening of songs like the theme from Ghostbusters to "The Monster Mash" lined up for people to listen to.

1996 was probably the most memorable Halloween for me. Mostly because we had a Halloween party at my house. My brother, sister, and I each got to invite one friend over to hang out, eat candy and chocolate and watch the Winnie the Pooh Halloween special that came out that year, Boo to You Too! Winnie the Pooh. The special aired on October 25th and I remember my dad taping it for us, so I think we watched it on VHS with our friends on Halloween rather than on October 25th, which was a Friday, with Halloween being on a Thursday, exactly like this year oddly enough.

The other thing that made Halloween in 1996 so memorable is that two days before Halloween, on October 29th, Toy Story finally came out on home video after being in theaters for about nine to ten months (it was in theaters for a long time even compared to other movies out at the time). Disney had commercials for it all over the place on TV for about a month leading up to the release date. Including several times during the October 25th broadcast of Boo to You Too! Winnie the Pooh. 

I think that's gonna be it for me for today. I just wanted to come on here quickly and talk about Halloween a little bit. Like I said at the beginning of this post, nothing fancy. But, I hope you all have an amazing Halloween and have fun whatever you're doing tonight. I'll be back soon with lots more blog posts, including one on something I thought we didn't have anymore, but just discovered we did still have, but are getting rid of. And that's the only teaser I'm giving you. You'll have to wait until next time to find out what that thing is. So until then have a great evening, Happy Halloween, and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

WildStorm's Star Trek Comic Book Series Overview

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back with another Star Trek comic book overview. Unlike the DC and Marvel overviews that I did in 2022 and 2023, this one is going to be a single post as I'm talking about the WildStorm Comics run that came out between 2000 and 2001. And because all of the comics came out over the course of a year and a half, there won't be that much of an organization to how I talk about these issues. Basically I'm going to talk about them by series, beginning with TOS and going to Voyager. One more thing about these comics as well. I've never read a single issue of the WildStorm Star Trek comics. I didn't even know about them until over a decade after WildStorm lost/gave up the Star Trek license. So I'm not going to have a whole lot to talk about with them. Let's get into it.

The TOS run of WildStorm's Star Trek comic book series, is the shortest of the entire run. WildStorm put out two one-shots, All of Me and Enter the Wolves, and that's it. The first issue has to do with a scientist who creates a device that can bring people from parallell universes into the main Star Trek Universe, so as an example, it could bring Spock from the Mirror Universe into the regular universe, and the Enterprise is sent to investigate and stop him if necessary. The second comic tells the story of Spock and Sarek's relationship during the Lost Era, or the 70 years between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. All of it was mentioned in the episodes of TNG that Sarek and Spock appeared in. The short version is Sarek opposes the Cardassian petition to join the Federation and is a sequel to the 1994 novel, Sarek, by A.C. Crispin, who also wrote this issue. What's bizarre about that, is in actual canon, the Cardassians never petitioned to join the Federation, and so Spock and Sarek disagreed over the war. Which makes more sense, since I highly doubt the Cardassians would join the Federation as a member world, given they'd lose their autonomy as the Cardassian Union. 

Next came the TNG series, which had three one shots, and two four issue mini-series in it's line. The first was the four issue mini-series, Perchance to Dream, followed by a one-shot called Embrace the Wolf which was the TNG sequel to the TOS episode, "Wolf in the Fold". Then another four mini-series came out called The Killing Shadows, followed by a second one-shot called The Gorn Crisis, which is the only WildStorm Star Trek comic I heard about as an article on it was published in a 2001 issue of the magazine, Star Trek Communicator. What's interesting about this one-shot graphic novel is that it was written by Kevin J. Anderson and his wife, Rebecca Moesta, who wrote the Star Wars: Young Jedi Knights series together from 1995 to 1998, and who each had individual writing credits on '90s Star Wars material. The final one-shot, Forgiveness, was published in 2001, wrapping up the TNG comics.

DS9 also had a comic book by WildStorm. However, it was a single four issue mini-series called N-Vector. I really don't know very much about these comics and trying to write a synopsis for each one-shot and mini-series would make this post longer than it needs to be. If you want to learn more there are synopses for all of these comics on Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki. As for WildStorm itself, aside from seeing ads for them in the comics that DC published in the 2000's, as the publisher became an imprint of DC in 1999, and reading a run of Gen13 and the 2005 Danger Girl mini-series, Back in Black, I'm not as familiar with WildStorm, being that they weren't part of the DC Universe when I was introduced to comics in the early 90's, and they were more mature and not appropriate for someone of my age in 1992. Even when I was in high school, WildStorm books weren't that easy to find compared to Marvel and DC, and again, because of my preferences, I wasn't interested in any of the WildStorm books. Even now, I have no desire to read comics from WildStorm.

At some point during this era, WildStorm did a four issue TNG/DS9 crossover comic called Divided We Fall. This story is set in the same continuity of the DS9 relaunch novel series, which began in 2000, so the comic involves the characters introduced in the novels. Which is interesting.

The Voyager comic consisted of three one-shots and one mini-series. The second one-shot was actually the comic book adaptation of the video game, Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, which came out in 2000 for the PC and the Mac, and 2001 for the PlayStation 2. The mini-series is also only three issues, instead of the four issues that the TNG and DS9 mini-series had. 

In January, 2001, a one-shot special issue was published. It contains six stories set in different eras. All four live action shows that existed in 2001 were represented in this issue.

The final comic I can talk about in this overview is Star Trek: New Frontier - Double Time. Star Trek: New Frontier was a series of novels, novellas, and eBooks written by Peter David that Pocket Books published between 1997 and 2015. Unlike other Star Trek novels, this series didn't include any of the core cast members as the central characters in the series. They might show up from time to time, but the series focused on original character, Captain Mackenzie Calhoun, and the crew of various starships called Excalibur. Calhoun's crew consists of side characters from various shows and books. Including Captain Elizabeth Shelby from "The Best of Both Worlds" and Zak Kebron, a Brikarian Starfleet Officer who was a classmate of Worf's at Starfleet Academy in the first three books in the Young Reader series, Star Trek: The Next Generation - Starfleet Academy. I actually wanna do a blog post on New Frontier sometime because it's pretty cool, but the series was created in response to the criticism that nothing could really happen in the Star Trek novels as this was before any of the relaunch series began publication and the TNG movies were still coming out alongside new seasons of DS9 and Voyager. With none of these characters showing up in the shows anymore, you could develop them and have them change and grow in ways that the main characters from the TV shows and movies couldn't outside of the shows and movies.

WildStorm had the shortest run of any Star Trek comic book publisher, being that it really only lasted a year to a year and a half with no ongoing monthly series. I think that's because by the time WildStorm had the license, Star Trek was becoming less and less popular, and with WildStorm being not very well known at the time, and Star Trek comics also not being as well known by 2000, it made sense that the comics probably didn't sell very well. Especially because the TV shows and movies were still coming out on a regular basis, so there wasn't that thirst for Star Trek stories in other mediums that there would be after Enterprise went off the air in 2005. 

I honestly don't know if I'll do an overview series on the Star Trek comics published by IDW. Mainly because there are just so many of them and most of them are mini-series and one shots like WildStorm published. Plus, even though I have read some of the IDW runs from the last five or six years, I haven't read any of them from 2007 to about 2018 or 2019, so that's a huge chunk of the comics I haven't read. So I don't have alot of history with the IDW comics, but I definitely have more than I do with the WildStorm and late 90's Marvel runs. We'll see though. In the meantime, I'll be back with more posts in the near future. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Books I've Read Recently: A Book Discussion

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm here to talk about a couple of books that I've read recently. Originally I had planned on doing individual reviews for each of these books, but neither fits into the way I do my blog these days since one of them is a Stephen King novel, which I didn't read until a couple of years ago, and I'm also not doing the "My Star Wars Experience" series on a weekly basis anymore, so this Star Wars novel also doesn't fit into the "My 90's and 2000's Experience". So I'm just gonna ramble about It by Stephen King, which was published in 1986, just before I was born, and A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller, which was published in 2014, a little over ten years ago. So let's get into it, starting with A New Dawn.

I cannot believe that it's been a little over ten years since A New Dawn was published (September 2nd, 2014). I also can't believe it's been ten years and 13 days since Star Wars Rebels debuted. The fact that I finally got to watch the show last year, before Ahsoka came out, and I finally got to read this book after ten years is incredible. I'll be honest, I really didn't know very much about this book when it first came out. I vaguely remember reading about it in an issue of Star Wars Insider, but I couldn't tell you what issue I read about it in. I just wasn't interested in it. By 2014 I had stopped buying Star Wars novels, even having stopped catching up on the Legends novels that I hadn't gotten to, having finished off with Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn (2013) and X-Wing: Mercy Kill by Aaron Allston (2012). There were just too many coming out, and I just wasn't as interested in them as I had been in the 90's and 2000's. Especially the ones coming out in the early 2010's.

Having watched Rebels last year though, I decided I wanted to read A New Dawn to see how Kanan and Hera met. Plus, having read John Jackson Miller's 2013 novel, Kenobi, last year, I was excited to see how he handled these two characters. Luckily the Force was with me because last month I went to visit my buddy Jonathan, who lives out of town, and he just happened to have the 2015 paperback edition of A New Dawn in his Star Wars book collection, and he lent it to me. I really enjoyed it. So much had been hinted at in Rebels, but it was fun to actually get to see the beginning of the relationship between these two awesome characters. I swear I could hear Freddie Prinze Jr. and Vanessa Marshall's voices as Kanan and Hera everytime I read their dialogue. I was also intrigued to see the beginning of Rae Sloan's Imperial career in this book, given that she's also the central antagonist of the Aftermath trilogy.

I'm not a big fan of Stephen King. Nor am I a fan of Horror. Yet, I'm a sucker for coming of age stories. I always have been. Which is what drew me to his 1986 novel, It. Especially after I'd seen the 2017 movie adaptation on Blu-ray a few years ago. I love the book. However, I'm not a fan of the edition that I own. I have the 2017 trade paperback edition, which is so heavy I could barely hold it long enough to get through more than one chapter at a time. Especially because of how long each chapter is. I at least tried to read two chapters a day, one chapter per reading session, and that worked well enough for me that I could get the book finished before the end of the month, it being the Halloween season now.

I found Richie to be way too obnoxious for my taste, but I liked the other main characters alot. Particularly Eddie, and Ben and Bill. Eddie, because he's similar to me due to him being medically fragile, and Ben and Bill because they were social outcasts. Plus their names are actually the same as two of the trains in the Thomas the Tank Engine book and TV series, and that was one of my favourite things when I was a kid. I know, I'm weird.

Also, it's funny because I actually knew who Beverly and Richie were before I even knew what It was. My very first Stephen King novel was the 2011 novel, 11/22/63, which is a time travel novel that deals with what might happen if someone prevented the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. In the book, the main character, Jake, travels back to September, 1958, after the events of It. He briefly visits Derry, which is the town that It takes place in, and randomly meets Bev and Richie. I had no idea that those two characters were from It as I actually didn't know a thing about Stephen King or his books, and I still don't since I'm not interested in his books in general, with It and 11/22/63 being the exception.

That's gonna be it for me for today my friends. I just wanted to talk about these two books for a bit, and didn't feel like doing individual reviews for either of them. Though I definitely plan on getting a mass market paperback edition of It at some point and if I do get one, I'll try to do a blog post on it at some point. Until then though, I might have another blog post coming out on Friday this week. I haven't decided yet. Jonathan also lent me all five seasons of the 2004 animated series, The Batman, on DVD, and I'm planning on doing a post on that once I've finished watching it since it's a show I watched on TV when the first two seasons aired in 2004 and 2005. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90's and 2000's Experience: The Star Trek: Voyager Relaunch Novel Series (2003-2020)

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was pretty good. So today I'm going to be talking about Star Trek novels, specifically the Star Trek: Voyager relaunch series that began publication in 2003, two years after the series ended its run on UPN. Despite it ending in 2020, my history with it only goes as far as 2014. I'll get into that a little later. Right now I wanna get into the history of the series before I get into my personal history with it. Let's get into it.

 Beginning in June 2003, the relaunch series began with Homecoming by Christie Golden. The DS9 relaunch series had started in 2000 with A Stitch in Time, which was written by Garak himself, Andrew Robinson and I guess the series was successful because Pocket Books began doing the Voyager series in 2003 and the TNG series in 2005. If you don't know what I mean by relaunch series, it's simple. Each TV show ended in the 90's or early 2000's. TNG ended with Star Trek Nemesis in 2002, DS9 ended with the series finale, "What You Leave Behind" in 1999, and Voyager ended with its series finale, "Endgame", in 2001. Each of these book series continued the story of each series where the TV show or movie left off. The Voyager series continued with The Farther Shore, also by Christie Golden, which acted as a continuation and wrap up of the initial storyline of what happened after Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant. It was published a month after Homecoming.

 Up next was the two book subseries, Spirit Walk, which consists of Old Wounds and Enemy of My Enemy, written by Christie Golden, and published in 2004. This duology is set after the Homecoming books, and Chakotay has taken command of Voyager following his promotion to captain. It also deals with the animosity growing between veteran crewmembers who'd been on Voyager since the ship began its journey through the Delta Quadrant, and those Starfleet officers who'd fought, suffered, and lost, but survived the Dominion War. This is the kind of thing that Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Jeri Taylor had promised the show would be about when they originally created Star Trek: Voyager in 1994 with the conflict between Janeway's Starfleet crew and Chakotay's Maquis crew, which lasted all of one episode. Two at the most. Probably because Berman and Piller were too set in their ways and with Piller and Taylor as showrunners, things were done the way they'd been done on TNG. But that's a story for another time.

Aside for the tenth anniversary novel trilogy, String Theory, no new Voyager novels were published from 2005 to 2009, with the publisher focusing on the TNG novels, and then the major crossover trilogy, Star Trek: Destiny, which featured characters from TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise. Both Janeway and Seven of Nine played big roles in the TNG novels leading up to the Destiny trilogy. I won't spoil anything major here, but something happens to Janeway in those books. She gets better though.

Finally, in 2009, the novels returned with Full Circle, which was written by Kirsten Beyer. If you recognize that name, but don't read the books, and have never read these Voyager novels, it's because she was part of the committee that created Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, and was co-executive producer for the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. 

After a total of fourteen books, published over a span of 17 years, the Voyager relaunch series ended on October 13th, 2020 with the novel To Lose the Earth. The relaunch novels were ended because of Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy dealing with events following the end of TNG, DS9, and Voyager, and the novels contradict the new shows. Which doesn't make any sense at all given that Paramount went out of its way to set the Kelvin Timeline movies, Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and Star Trek Beyond (2016), in an alternate timeline/parallel universe. They could've kept these books going and have them be a separate continuity, given that the novels were never canon to begin with. Or, they could've just kept the books going since the novels take place before the destruction of Romulus, which was shown in the backstory for the 2009 movie, so there'd still be plenty of time for the backstory of Picard to happen. But, given that both Lower Decks and Prodigy revealed that Voyager was decommissioned as soon as she returned to the Alpha Quadrant, it makes sense that the novels would have to be discontinued.

My personal history with this relaunch began in 2003, as the books were being published. However, other than the Spirit Walk duology, I got every book up to Acts of Contrition, which was published in 2014. I had intended on getting Atonement, which was the next book in the series, which was published in 2015, but, between my parents and I getting ready to move, which ended up not happening until 2016, and me getting sick in December, 2015, I never got around to it. On top of that, there were also delays between books, after A Pocket Full of Lies was published in 2016. And with me not being able to get whatever the then current Star Trek official magazine was at the time, I had no idea that further books existed. And, being that Star Trek novels don't get talked about online very often, in particular on YouTube, I didn't find out that way either. 

I actually loved the Voyager relaunch novels, because, aside from Admiral Janeway appearing as a quick cameo in Star Trek Nemesis as Captain Picard's superior officer, we had no idea what happened to any of the remaining characters. And with Paramount being focused on prequels to TOS with the movies and TV shows since Enterprise started in 2001, both DS9 and Voyager were kinda just swept under the rug once the shows ended in 1999 and 2001 respectively. However, there was one aspect that I didn't like in the final two books of the series that I read, Protectors and Acts of Contrition. There will be minor spoilers for these two books, so if you're a Voyager fan and have never read these books, this is your warning.

In Protectors, Tom Paris's mother, Julia, consumed by grief over the death of her husband, Owen, decides to petition the Federation courts to declare Tom and B'Elanna unfit to be parents, effectively removing Miral, and their son, whose name I don't remember as it's been a few years since I read these books, from their care, simply because she's angry at Tom for having to lie to her about B'Elanna and Miral's survival during the Destiny trilogy, because of the fact that a renegade faction of Klingons were attempting to assassinate Miral. The hearing is shown in Acts of Contrition, but I had to wonder why, something as petty as family court to determine the fitness of two Starfleet officers to be parents was even being brought up in the first place. I get that these novels came out in 2014, when entertainment media had already taken more realistic elements, but from what I've read about Kirsten Beyer, she's a Star Trek fan, so why would she include this in here, considering the whole idea of Star Trek is that Earth is a utopia, where petty squabbles and disagreements over things like this no longer exist?

Especially because if you're doing this to someone like Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres, then wouldn't you have to do this to every Starfleet officer who has inadvertently put their child in danger simply by bringing them with them to assignments like on Deep Space 9, other starbases and ships like the Enterprise-D that allowed officers to have their families onboard? Because I don't know about you, but Jake Sisko was in alot of dangerous situations over the course of DS9's seven seasons. Same with all the children on the Enterprise-D in TNG. What about Naomi Wildman who was born on Voyager? I get Beyer was trying to add drama to the story and actually give Tom something to do, but, again, this is Star Trek, people in general shouldn't be THAT petty, but the wife and mother of Starfleet officers especially shouldn't be that petty when all Tom and B'Elanna tried to do was protect Miral from Klingon assassins. 

Unfortunately, there's no real information on the creative process behind the writing of these books, so I have no idea if this was something Beyer came up with on her own, or if she had help from Pocket Books. Paramount's licensing department didn't veto its inclusion, then again Paramount is so anti-Star Trek, and always has been, no matter what they say, the licensing department probably didn't care enough to veto it. Especially since by 2014, they were starting to get CBS All Access (now Paramount+) ready and getting ready to bring Star Trek back to television, not to mention preparing for the production of Star Trek Beyond. They probably weren't all that concerned about tie-in novels to a TV show that they had already ended thirteen years earlier, and wanted nothing to do with.

Aside from that, these books are great. It gave us more time with everyone from Voyager, given that they were being ignored in the shows and movies, AND at the time Homecoming came out in 2003, nobody, not even Paramount, had any way of knowing that Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and Star Trek: Prodigy would be a thing twenty years later. Even the comics being published by IDW were ignoring DS9 and Voyager for the most part, aside from the occasional appearance of certain characters in the TNG comics they were publishing. So if these novels were the only way I was going to get more from the characters of one of my favourite TV shows of all time, then, yes, I was happy to buy and read them so long as I had the shelf space and the money to do so.

Alright my friends, I think that's gonna be it for me for today. I'll be back soon for more blog posts in the very near future. In the meantime, I hope you all have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.   

My Star Wars Experience: Vector Prime and the Effect It Had on Star Wars

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Friday. Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the original publication of the first book in the Star Wars: The New Jedi Order series, Vector Prime by R.A. Salvatore. So I wanted to talk about that book and the impact it had on the franchise going forward. Let's get into it.

 Published on October 5th, 1999, Vector Prime was the first book in Del Rey's new line of novels set after Return of the Jedi. Bantam Spectra had begun their Star Wars novel program with Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn in 1991, but since then their approach, most likely due to the prequel era embargo they'd been placed under by Lucasfilm, things had gotten stale by 1999. Luke was too powerful, the Empire had been defeated, and there was no serious threat to any of the main characters. Especially since the Emperor and Darth Vader had been destroyed in Return of the Jedi and Thrawn was gone. So Lucasfilm, with the help of Del Rey, Dark Horse Comics, and author, James Luceno, developed a series where nobody was safe and there was uncertainty as to whether the New Jedi Order, led by Luke Skywalker, could defeat the latest enemy of the New Republic, the Yuuzhan Vong.

I first heard about Vector Prime and The New Jedi Order when I got issue #43 of Star Wars Insider. The news section, which was called "Star News" at the time, had a brief announcement article on the new series in that issue, and then by the time issue #46 came out in late 1999, the book had been published. I thought it was cool, but I didn't immediately rush out to buy the book in hardcover when it came out because hardcovers were pretty expensive 25 years ago. 

I did end up getting the book when it came out in paperback in the summer of 2000. I'm pretty sure I got it in August 2000, because I don't think I got it for Christmas or my birthday as I was focusing on getting the Bantam era novels, which I didn't own very many of at that point. I enjoyed it, but actually reading Chewie's death near the end sucked. I knew about it before I read the book because issue #47 of Star Wars Insider had a whole article on it. So I knew about it going into the book. That article did not prepare me enough that's for sure.

As I mentioned the novels published by Bantam had gotten stale by 1999, and with the world changing, and the Prequel Trilogy coming out, people were no longer interested in novels where there were no stakes because Luke was really powerful and the stories were disconnected from one another despite sharing the same continuity. Even to this day, the novels are no longer tied to Han, Luke, and Leia. And that was another problem that The New Jedi Order ended up fixing. That and the prequel era novels gave us so many other characters as well. Like Jax Pavan in Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter by Michael Reaves. 

While I do think The New Jedi Order was a bit too dark and not alot of fun, it was still important, because it revitalized the Star Wars book publishing program at a time where the books were just as important as the movies. But, it also signified the end of the importance of the novels as the franchise was entering into television with Genndy Tartakovsky's animated series, Star Wars: Clone Wars in 2003, and then Dave Filoni's animated series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars in 2008. Because we had weekly episodes of Star Wars coming out, people began gravitating away from the books and comics and they became the aspects of the franchise that the really hardcore fans experienced and the general audience had no interest in anymore. Which is fine, because Star Wars novels and comics are still being published today even though they're a more niche corner of the Star Wars Universe.

One thing that I feel is unique to Vector Prime is the marketing. While the Shadows of the Empire Multimedia Project had commercials for the toys and the video game, Vector Prime had a TV commercial, narrated by Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, for the book itself. I don't remember seeing the commercial for the book on any TV channel I was watching in 1999, but it exists. Which is fascinating to me because Star Wars novels and comics never got TV commercials before this, and I don't think any of the books had them after this. So this was an unusual way to market the book. 

According to Leland Chee, the former keeper of lore for Lucasfilm, and I did not know this until recently, Chewie's death in Vector Prime was one of the reasons that the Lucasfilm Story Group chose to relegate the original Expanded Universe to Legends, in favour of a new continuity in novels and comics. Which makes sense since you can't just retcon Chewie's death so that he can appear in the Sequel Trilogy movies, but keep The New Jedi Order and all the books that came after it in continuity. It just doesn't work. Especially when The New Jedi Order takes place within the same time period that the Sequel Trilogy movies ended up taking place in. 

Vector Prime, and just The New Jedi Order in general, revitalized the Star Wars novel publishing program in a way that caused it to grow to where it is now. Because, even the prequel era book program was slow to start following the novelization of The Phantom Menace and the first few books in the young reader series, Jedi Apprentice. I mean Rogue Planet didn't come out until 2000, and Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter and Cloak of Deception didn't come out until 2001. And that was because of potential spoilers for The Phantom Menace. So The New Jedi Order kept things going until the prequel era could be better explored once Attack of the Clones came out and authors could tell stories set during the Clone Wars.

Alright my friends, I think that's gonna be it for me for this week. I'll be back next week for more blog posts. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you later. Take care.

My 90's and 2000's Experience: Watching Step by Step For the First Time

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was pretty good. It was quiet, but I wasn't bored. In fact, I actually had a few laughs last night. I watched the TGIF series Step by Step for the first time last night on DVD. So I decided to sit down and write about my experience watching the show for the first time. I'm not only going to be talking about my previous history with the show, but talking about how I watched the show last night, AND I'll be going over the episodes I watched. So let's get into it.

As I mentioned last week in part two of my TGIF overview post, I didn't remember watching Step by Step when I was a kid. So watching the episodes that I watched last night, that held true. However, I do remember seeing commercials for it on TV during Full House, Family Matters, and the summer reruns of the first season of Sabrina the Teenage Witch in 1997, before Step by Step moved over to CBS (along with Family Matters) for its final season in the 1997-1998 broadcast season. Mainly because of Patrick Duffy and Suzanne Somers, not because of any of the kids on the show. So that's my very brief history with the show.

Step by Step is about a blended family who come together when Frank, played by Patrick Duffy (Dallas), and Carol, played by Suzanne Somers (Three's Company) get married while on vacation in Jamaica. The basic premise is similar to The Brady Bunch but produced and set in the 90's, rather than the 70's. However, because it was made in the 90's, the writers could place the six (eventually seven) children, and even the adults, into more serious situations. The episodes usually end with Frank and Carol in bed about to have sex, or getting things ready for the next day, with Carol making some sort of chart, graph, or schedule for the family to stay organized.

Speaking of the family, the kids are Al, played by Christine Lakin, Dana, played by Staci Keanan (My Two Dads), J.T., played by Brandon Call, Mark, played by Christopher Castile (Beethoven and Beethoven's 2nd), Brendan, played by Josh Byrne, and Karen, played by Angela Watson. Al, J.T., and Brendan are Frank's kids, and Dana, Karen, and Mark are Carol's kids. There's also other family members who appear throughout the show, with Carol's sister, Penny, played by Patrika Darbo, and their mom, Ivy, played by Peggy Rea, who had played Lulu Hogg, the wife of Boss Hogg (Sorrell Booke), and the sister of Rosco (James Best), on The Dukes of Hazzard for most of that show's run from 1979 to 1985, appear in the first season only, and Frank's nephew, Cody, played by Sasha Mitchell, appearing in seasons 1-5. Oh, and then there's the youngest child of Frank and Carol, Lilly, who was born at the end of season 4.

Because the show was produced by Miller-Boyett Productions, the same company that produced Full House and Family Matters, and would go on to produce Fuller House from 2016-2020, Step by Step shares alot of similarities with those other shows in terms of its writing, the way the episodes are structured, and the show's music score. And because the show was produced by the same company who produced Family Matters and aired on ABC at 8:30 pm, right after Family Matters, for the show's first two seasons, before it got moved to 9 pm to make room for Boy Meets World, Steve Urkel, played by Jaleel White, guest stars in season 1, episode 2, "The Dance". Unfortunately, this episode isn't on the DVD I have, but I'd love to track that episode down sometime, just because I loved Urkel on Family Matters and his guest appearance on Full House in that show's fourth season. 

When I was out of the city with Brad to surprise our pal, Jonathan, we went to a store called Chumleigh's. It's a second hand media store, similar to Odds & Sods here in Ottawa, except Chumleigh's sells books, video games, and VHS tapes, in addition to CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays. While we were there I found the 2006 DVD release, Television Favorites: Step by Step. This was the first ever DVD release for the series, and the only one until the individual season sets were released as Manufacture-on-Demand releases by Warner Archive Collection from 2018 to 2020, and the complete series set was released in 2023. 

So this 2006 release contains six episodes, as sort of a sampler release for people to buy to see if they like the show if they've never seen it before. Which is a good idea, especially in 2006 when one DVD box set for a season of television could be anywhere between $50 and $100 depending on the popularity of the show. So because of how pricey it could be to blind buy an entire season of a series you've never seen before, sampler discs like this were a great idea. Not every studio did them mind you, mostly because many studios never quite embraced releasing TV shows on DVD, the way others did. Warner Bros. was one of the major proponents of TV shows on DVD, as they began releasing their then modern shows like Smallville, One Tree Hill, and The O.C. as soon as the first seasons of those shows ended, as well as their classic shows like The Dukes of Hazzard, Batman: The Animated Series, and Friends pretty early on in the 2000's.

The episodes on this disc are "Pilot" (season 1, episode 1), "Rules of the House" (season 1, episode 3), "J.T.'s World" (season 2, episode 4), "Christmas Story" (season 3, episode 11), "I'll Be Home for Christmas" (season 4, episode 12), and "Your Cheatin' Heart" (season 7, episode 3). So there's a decent variety of episodes, though I am surprised that the series finale wasn't included given that the pilot episode was included. 

You all know how I feel about pilot episodes of a TV show that are simply called "Pilot", so I won't go over that again, but obviously I wasn't impressed that an early 90's sitcom would have a pilot episode called "Pilot". This episode does a great job at introducing all of the characters and telling the audience who they are as people. Carol actually reminds me of my own mom when it comes to her organizational skills, and her desire to keep the family organized. We'll see more of this in the next episode I'll be talking about. I also love Al and Dana as characters though both Karen and J.T. feel a bit too shallow for my taste, and neither Mark nor Brendan actually get very much screen time in this episode. Frank is your typical late 80's/early 90's sitcom dad, which is fine.

Staci Keanan and Christine Lakin have a podcast where they watch and talk about every episode of Step by Step. I listened to the first episode of the podcast, and apparently the opening title sequence was filmed at Six Flags Magic Mountain, which I've been to. They didn't say when exactly the opening title sequence was filmed, but given that the show debuted on September 20th, 1991, I'd say it was filmed either in late 1990 or early 1991. Regardless, it was about two years before I went to Magic Mountain on January 30th, 1993.

 "Rules of the House" is another great episode. One of the things I love about this show is that, despite being a network show and being a sitcom, it didn't shy away from showing the kids not getting along with each other. Not just in the usual sibling way that you'd see on Full House, but even J.T., Al, and Brendan don't get along with Dana, Karen, and Mark and it sticks beyond just these early episodes. Step by Step basically gave us what we never got with Star Trek: Voyager since the writers resolved the issues of blending the Starfleet and Maquis crews together. Again, Carol very much reminded me of my own mom in this episode. Though we never had family meetings when I was growing up. My parents usually decided on the rules and then told my siblings and I those rules, expecting us to follow them, as they were raised by their parents.

 "J.T.'s World" was my introduction to Cody Lambert, Frank's nephew. Cody reminds me of George (Giancarlo Caltabiano) from the 1998-2001 YTV sitcom, Radio Active. Both characters are really strange characters, though unlike George who is just out there, Cody has moments where he's really smart and really wise, often setting the other characters straight when they screw up and he notices. This episode is an homage to Wayne's World, which Paramount Pictures had just released earlier in 1992, several months before this episode aired and had just been released on VHS only two months prior to this episode's debut.

In this episode J.T. gets his own Public Access TV show, and produces it with Al, Mark, and Brendan as his production crew, and Cody as his on camera partner. Their relationship is strained when Lisa, a girl that J.T. likes, ends up falling for Cody instead. Lisa was played by Elizabeth Berkley, who played Jessie Spano on Saved by the Bell, which was still hugely popular and on the air at the time this episode aired in 1992. 

I always find it strange when a compilation of TV show episodes gets released on VHS or DVD, and a Christmas episode is included. Mainly because alot of people don't like to watch Christmas themed episodes except at Christmastime. Personally, I don't mind watching Christmas episodes anytime of the year, especially because alot of shows have Christmas episodes every season and if I'm watching a full season of a show, I don't like skipping an episode simply because it's a Christmas episode and I'm not necessarily watching the show at Christmastime. Though I do try to watch Christmas themed episodes at Christmastime in addition to the Christmas specials and movies that I watch during that time of year.

In "Christmas Story" Frank and Carol are arrested after they break into a toy store, that Frank had the key for as he'd been remodeling it recently, on Christmas Eve. They'd forgotten to buy stocking stuffers for the kids, and a train set that Brendan had asked for for Christmas. The deputy who arrests Frank and Carol was played by Don Knotts, and the officer is named Fief, as a nod to his character from The Andy Griffith Show, Deputy Barney Fife, which is cool. This episode is also an example of Cody being wise and setting the kids straight when they're so blinded by Christmas greed, they fail to realize that Frank and Carol are gone. 

In "I'll Be Home for Christmas", J.T. feels he is too old to celebrate Christmas with the family and he goes on a ski trip with some friends. Meanwhile Carol's grumpy aunt, Edna, comes to visit for the holidays, making the rest of the family miserable. Once again, Cody saves the day by telling Frank that he needs to be more forthcoming when it comes to J.T. My favourite part of this episode, aside from Cody and seeing the development of the bond between Carol's kids, and Franks kids, is Doris Roberts as Aunt Edna.

I loved watching Everybody Loves Raymond when I was in high school because of Doris, who played Ray's mom, Marie, and Peter Boyle, who played Ray's dad, Frank. So to see Doris in an earlier role (Raymond began in 1996 and this episode aired in 1994) was a surprise. A fun surprise too, because she worked really well with the main cast.

 The final episode on this disc is season 7, episode 3, "Your Cheatin' Heart". While it's not as good as the other episodes in this set, it's still really good. Rich, played by Jason Marsden (Max in A Goofy Movie) tries to surprise Dana, who is in a serious relationship with him, by secretly taking dance lessons for a wedding they're going to. But, he ends up breaking several dates with Dana to do so. Naturally, Karen and Al get involved and convince Dana that Rich is cheating on her. This episode is the most I've seen of Karen in this entire batch of episodes after the pilot, so it was nice to see her more involved in this episode. The character of Lilly seemed to be the writers's attempt at having a Michelle type character on the show. Unlike Full House though, which practically became the Michelle show by the end of it, Lilly was introduced too late in the series to have much of an effect on Step by Step in the way Michelle had. Mostly because Michelle was on Full House from the very beginning while Lilly wasn't born until the end of season 4, and didn't get main cast status until season 6.

I am very glad I finally got to see Step by Step after all these years. It wasn't a show I ever saw in reruns, and of course I didn't watch it during its original run in the 90's. Sure, it was only six episodes, with two of them being Christmas themed episodes, but they were really good episodes, and I enjoyed watching them. I found myself laughing several times. The show also doesn't feel as preachy as Full House does, which is good. Yet, it's still a show that kids can watch alongside their parents. 

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I've got two more blog posts for you this week possibly. I'm currently reading Star Wars: A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller as the friend I visited last week lent it to me, and I'm about halfway through the book right now. So that discussion is gonna happen sometime this week. But also, this Saturday is the 25th anniversary of the publication of Vector Prime by R.A. Salvatore, which was the first book in the New Jedi Order series which ran from 1999 to 2003, and essentially began the modern era of Star Wars book publishing, where there's a less cheesy tone to the novels being published. So I'll be doing a post talking about that book on Friday. Until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90's and 2000's Experience: TGIF Part 2 - The Shows I Didn't Watch or Don't Remember Watching (1989-1999)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I got an interesting week coming up this week, but, I figured I'd come on and do the second part of my two part TGIF overview. Last week I talked about all the shows I watched. This week I'll be talking about four of the shows I didn't watch or don't remember watching. These are all from the original 90's run of TGIF as I didn't watch any of the second run from the 2000's and I didn't watch the ABC Comedy Friday run in 2012-2017, or the third run of TGIF in 2018-2019. As I mentioned last week, I watched some of the shows, but not on TGIF. So let's get into it.

I'm going in chronological order of when each show debuted, so up first is Perfect Strangers. I honestly don't remember ever watching this show. That doesn't mean I didn't, but it ran from March, 1986 to August, 1993, so it's quite possible I did watch it, I just don't remember it, as I never saw it in reruns like I did Full House and Boy Meets World. I also don't remember watching it on Friday nights either. I do remember seeing Mark Linn Baker and Bronson Pinchot as their characters from the show, Larry and Balkie, in promos for ABC during Full House. I just don't remember watching any episodes.

Next up is Step by Step, which starred Patrick Duffy (Dallas), Suzanne Somers (Three's Company), and Staci Keanan (My Two Dads). It ran from 1991-1997 on ABC and then from 1997-1998 on CBS, but, again, I don't remember watching it. Looking at the cover image above it looks familiar, particularly Patrick Duffy and Suzanne Somers. However, we didn't really watch TGIF until the second season of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and the fourth season of Boy Meets World debuted alongside the only seasons of Teen Angel and You Wish, and by that point Step by Step was starting its final season over on CBS and was no longer part of TGIF. It aired in the 8:30 pm time slot for the show's first two seasons, then for the next three seasons it aired in the 9 pm slot before moving to the 9:30 pm time slot for its final season on ABC, so it's possible we did watch it or that I saw a few episodes here and there. I just don't remember it very well. I also can't find it on the lists of shows that aired on Global, CTV, CTV 2 (CHRO/The New RO/A Channel here in Ottawa), Citytv, or CBC, so I have no idea if it even aired on any Canadian channel at all.

The third show I didn't watch on TGIF in the 90's was the TV series version of Clueless. I remember seeing commercials for it on Global, as, despite its move from ABC to UPN at the beginning of its second season, it aired on Global for the entirety of its three season run. That's how I knew of its existence even if I didn't know the movie was a thing.

The last show on this list is The Hughleys. I remember seeing commercials for this show on TV during its run from 1998-2002, but I never watched any episodes. By the time this show moved to TGIF in the fall of 1999, we were basically just watching Boy Meets World so we could be in bed by 9 since I was having to get up at 6 to catch my bus for 7 on weekday mornings, and Mom wanted to go to bed since she'd just finished a week of nights at work and was tired. And since Boy Meets World and Sabrina the Teenage Witch weren't paired up on the TGIF schedule anymore, we didn't watch Sabrina anymore. Plus The Hughleys was only part of TGIF for a year before it moved to UPN, so it really wasn't on there for very long.

And that my friends is it for my look at TGIF. As I mentioned last time, it was a special time, where my mom, my siblings and I watched these shows, whether we watched them as part of TGIF or not. Getting to remember those times is exactly what Nostalgia is about for me. And it's why I reorganized this blog to the way I do it now. What's funny is that early 2010's stuff like The Avengers, Man of Steel, The Amazing Spider-Man, Arrow, and The Flash (2014) have either already hit their tenth anniversary or will be this year. Which means that Nostalgia is starting to include these shows and movies, as well as comic book stuff like DC's New 52. Which is insane to me since those things all came out when I was an adult.

That's it for me for today. I'll be back on Wednesday for another blog post. I'm not sure if it'll be a Star Wars post or a more general post, but I'll make that decision on Wednesday. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.