Brief Update and Mini-Review of Star Trek: Prodigy Episode 1

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I just wanted to let you all know that I am planning something big for Josh's Nostalgia Corner. Three big things actually. The first is a 5 part series on my history with Star Wars novels, according to publication order rather than the order in which I experienced them in. So stay tuned for that. I'm also going to be doing a multi-part series on Star Trek. Which means rewatching select episodes from each series as well as all of the movies. The third, and final big, time consuming thing I'll be doing at some point is my history with Animorphs, which will include the books, the TV show, and the graphic novels. I have other similar projects in my head for this blog, but those won't be happening for a really long time, so don't expect too much from me in this short amount of time. These won't be reviews, they'll be a look into my history with particular franchises, it's just I want to take my time with them and give them their due especially because these are the franchises that kept me busy when I couldn't do anything else due to illness or having surgery or dealing with some medical stuff when I was a kid. So those are the three MAJOR things I have planned for the blog. So stay tuned for that. Right now, in keeping with talking about the shows, movies, comics, novels, and video games that I love, I just want to talk about my thoughts on the premiere of Star Trek: Prodigy. So, let's get into it.

The premiere was actually really REALLY good!!!! One thing about modern TV shows aimed specifically at children is that there are many of them that aren't watchable by an adult audience. Not that there weren't when I was a kid in the '90s, but when I think back on alot of the cartoons that I watched growing up, like Batman: The Animated Series, Sailor Moon, Justice League, and Digimon, there were more that could be considered to be for all ages rather than just specifically for kids. So when they announced that Nickelodeon had greenlit an animated Star Trek series, specifically for kids, I was concerned that it would only appeal to kids with adults being unable to watch it. I'm glad I was wrong.

The entire time I was watching the episode, I found myself thinking of Nickelodeon's 2012 animated series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as well as Cartoon Network's 2011 short-lived animated series, Green Lantern: The Animated Series, which both used a similar tone and animation style as the one that Star Trek: Prodigy uses. Which is pretty cool because I liked both the Green Lantern series, and the Ninja Turtles series. I also like that this is the first TV movie style premiere episode for Star Trek since Enterprise's premiere, "Broken Bow" aired 20 years ago. Technically Discovery had a two episode premiere back in 2017, but each episode had it's own title sequence, credits and episode title, whereas this episode is like the premieres of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, where the episodes had a single title sequence, credits, and episode title, but, will probably be split into two half-hour episodes for reruns later on (the previous four shows were two hour premieres with the episodes being split into two one hour episodes for reruns). 

One thing that got me excited for this show, despite my concerns about it's presentation, was the fact that Kate Mulgrew was returning to the franchise to reprise her role from Star Trek: Voyager, Captain Kathryn Janeway. Voyager is my favourite Star Trek series, besides The Next Generation, so to have Captain Janeway returning, with her original actor voicing her, made me extremely excited.

I don't want to say much more than that, because this show is awesome and I don't want to spoil anything about it for you, in case you haven't watched the first episode yet. The characters are great, the animation is spectacular, and the best part about it is that the ENTIRE cast and crew of the show is excited to be working on it. I watched the episode's after show, The Ready Room hosted by Wil Wheaton, last night, and during the episode, he interviewed Kate Mulgrew. I felt her excitement and enthusiasm as I watched her talk about her return to Star Trek after a 19 year absence (she appeared as Janeway in a cameo in the tenth Star Trek movie, Star Trek Nemesis), and it was infectious. So I am very excited to see where this show goes over the course of the season. 

Alrighty that's it for me for today, but next week I'll be back with part 1 of my personal Star Wars novels history, which will cover the original run of books that were published by Del-Rey from 1976 to 1983 and what my original thoughts on the books were when I read them in the late '90s and the 2000s. Until then have a great rest of your weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My History With Dune

Hey everyone! I was going to wait until next week to do this post, but with Denis Villeneuve's Dune being released today, I decided this was the most appropriate time for this to come out. Today I'm going to be going into my history with the 1965 novel, Dune, written by Frank Herbert, as well as some of it's sequels and it's many adaptations. Apart from the first book by Brian Herbert (the son of Frank Herbert) and Kevin J. Anderson, who is one of my favourite Star Wars novels from the '90s, I'm not going to delve into the sequels mainly because Hunters of Dune is the only one I've read. So let's get into it.

 Dune was originally published in Analog magazine, which is a Science Fiction magazine that published the works of Sci-Fi writers as a test to see if people liked it enough to buy the book, from 1963 to early 1965. The novel was published as two serials within the magazine, with the first one called Dune World which was three parts, and then the second one, The Prophet of Dune, which was five parts. The first serial makes up the first section of the book, called Dune, and then the second serial covered part 2, Muad'Dib and part 3, The Prophet. The book was published in book form in August, 1965.

 I was in high school by the time I became aware of the book. My parents actually had the first five books that Herbert wrote for the series before he passed away in 1986, but I only ever read the first one as it's the one I wanted to keep during the Great Purges of 2015, where my parents and I got rid of a whole ton of books, CDs, movies, toys, comics, collectibles, and furniture in anticipation of our move, which wouldn't actually happen until 2016. It's still in my collection today. I didn't end up reading it until last summer, because what else was I gonna do since we were in the middle of a global pandemic, there was no vaccine yet, and we were all in lockdown still. I had actually tried reading it back in either late 2016 or early 2017 but I ended up not finishing it at the time.

To be honest, I didn't like the book all that much. I found it incredibly complex, with characters that just felt bland to me. I'm autistic and so I'm not very good with subtext, nuance and hidden meaning. And Dune has alot of subtext, nuance, and hidden meaning. I mean ALOT of it. Because of that, I didn't understand what exactly was going on aside from the surface level stuff like a family is on the run because of a Galactic Empire over a high demand commodity. Which is nothing we haven't seen before in other books, movies, TV shows etc outside of the Science Fiction genre. I just wasn't getting it. That doesn't mean it's a bad book or that it was written poorly, because it's very well written and it's a great story, but if you're not able to understand the layers of the story and how Herbert expertly crafted the story or if you're not into slow political thrillers, that take their time to build the story, you're not going to get very much out of this book.

I discovered a YouTuber named Wonder Meg while scrolling through Twitter yesterday. I checked out her channel, and she has a series of discussions on the book and goes chapter by chapter. I've watched the first two parts so far, because they're REALLY long and I did not want to stay up all night watching the videos, but they're really in depth and has helped me to understand the book a little bit better, which is something other reviews that I've watched on YouTube haven't done. Check out part 1 here because it's worth a watch if you're like me and have difficulty understanding this sort of thing, or if you're a fan of Dune and want to pick up on stuff that maybe you haven't before. 

However, back in 2007 I got the paperback edition of the seventh book in the series, Hunters of Dune, which was written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson based on notes written by Frank Herbert for a seventh entry in the series, probably in the mid-'80s prior to his death in 1986. I got it either as a birthday present or Christmas present, I don't remember which. I read it and was extremely confused because I hadn't read the previous six books, or any of the prequels that were out at the time, which also totalled six books. So this was my first introduction to the world of Dune and I liked this book okay, but I never read it again after that. Then I got rid of it probably during the Great Book Purge of 2015 or maybe at some point before that because I hadn't picked it up since I finished reading it in early 2008. 

I'm planning on upgrading to the newer mass market paperback edition of Dune in the near future because my copy isn't falling apart yet, but the back cover is close to falling off and the front cover is almost there as well, but not as soon as the back cover is. In her second video on the book, which covers chapters 2, 3, and 4, Wonder Meg recommended this edition to the viewers. I thought about getting the most recent hardcover edition which includes an introduction by Brian Herbert, but it looks really big and I'm finding that as I get older, big, thick hardcovers and trade paperbacks of novels are harder for me to hold for long periods of time, which slows down the amount of time it would take for me to finish the book in. It's one of the reasons I want to get rid of my trade paperback copy of Stephen King's It and replace it with a smaller mass market paperback edition because that book is huge and extremely hard to hold. So, this edition is the one I'm going to get.

The first movie adaptation of Dune, directed by David Lynch, came out in 1984. It stars Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides, Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck, and Sting as Baron Harkonnen's nephew. The movie bombed at the box office but has become a cult classic since then, most likely through it's numerous home video releases over the years.

I haven't seen the movie yet but I do own it on DVD. I got it in a four movie collection with Flash Gordon (1980), The Last Starfighter (1984), and Battlestar Galactica (1978). I actually keep meaning to watch it but I just haven't gotten to it yet. Part of the reason I was interested in seeing the movie, aside from the fact that Patrick Stewart did this movie a few years before he was cast as Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, is because of the mixed feelings about it from film fans and fans of the source material. Plus it's a piece of film history.

There was also a TV miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel in the year 2000. I also have never seen this adaptation of the book, but I've heard it's really good. I'm not familiar with anyone in the cast of this miniseries, except for William Hurt, because he plays General Ross in the MCU films starting with The Incredible Hulk (2008). I've heard people say this miniseries is extremely hard to find as it's not even streaming anywhere and the DVD goes for a ridiculous price on eBay and other online markets. So I probably won't get the chance to see it, but you never know.

And that brings us to today when Denis Villeneuve's film, Dune, was released. With a few exceptions, I'm familiar with the main cast of this film as they have been in a few other movies that I've seen and enjoyed. Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Chang Chen, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Sharon Duncan-Brewster are actors I've never encountered before. In fact, until they were announced as having been cast in this movie, I'd never even heard of them as I'm not as steeped in film culture as other people are. I'm probably not going to watch this movie. At least not for a very long time. The pandemic is still at a place where I'm not comfortable with going to the movie theatre, and I don't have access to it since I don't have Crave and HBO Max isn't available here in Canada. Honestly, I'm a bit wary of the way movies adapt books and comics these days, especially if the adaptations are being made by Warner Bros. because their track record as of late hasn't been very good. 

I'm glad that people are excited for this movie, though it looks like some people have too high expectations for the movie because I've seen some disappointed people on Twitter this last week, with the press screenings happening. And that's because WB had a poor marketing strategy for this movie and some people, probably people who have never read the book, were expecting an action film with space and ground battles that rival those in the Star Wars franchise, but that's not what Dune is at all. Plus this movie is only the first half of the book so we're only getting half of the story, similar to what WB did with the more recent movie adaptations of Stephen King's It and what was done with the movie adaptations of the last Harry Potter book, the last Hunger Games book, and the last Twilight book to name some of the book to movie adaptations of the last ten years. 

And that's my history with Frank Herbert's Dune. Nothing too juicy given I only talked about two books and haven't seen any of the adaptations of the first book. But, I still wanted to do something in honour of the movie since alot of people are really excited about it and most of the reviewers that I follow on YouTube, a podcast or blogs, have seen it and enjoyed it. So cheers to those of you who are excited for this movie. As for me, I will definitely be back at some point with another post. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

A Look Back at Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt (1988) for the Nintendo Entertainment System

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing quite well. Welcome to Josh's Nostalgia Corner where I, Josh, will be talking about the movies, TV shows, video games, comic books, and novels that I loved growing up. I used to run a blog called The Review Basement, which you can check out here. Over there you'll find lots of reviews, lists, and other posts. But I was finding that I was reviewing the things that I like, rather than talking about them and it wasn't what I wanted to do. I was also reviewing brand new stuff that had just come out like Only Murders in the Building, Love, Victor, and Free Guy (which I loved btw) and it just wasn't working for me anymore. So I decided to start this blog where I will be writing about the entertainment that I have the best memories of. Like, today's topic is going to be Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt for the NES.

Growing up my family never had a ton of money. We weren't completely poor, but my parents couldn't afford to buy everything my siblings and I wanted. So when it came to things like game consoles we usually had to wait a few years after launch to get the newest one. Which is fine, because we got alot of mileage out of the consoles we had. I mean we were still playing the NES well into 1997 alongside the SNES. 

My mom bought the NES for my dad for Christmas or his birthday in either 1991 or 1992 and the 1988 combo cartridge release, Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt was the game that came with it. With my dad working and my mom home with my siblings and I, she played the NES more than my dad did. But the three of us, me, my sister, and my brother, spent hours watching her play. When I say hours I mean in total. She probably only played about half an hour per day if that. Lol. 

Here's proof that I actually played the console myself. My mom found this picture of me playing Duck Hunt on the floor of the second townhouse we lived in, in the area of the city now known as South Keys. I think this is the most '90s picture I have ever seen myself in. I mean all of those drawers underneath the TV contained audio cassettes, the TV itself is vintage '80s, we have a turntable to play vinyl records, a cassette player, a VCR, and an old style radio. And look, the NES is on the floor, because back then controllers didn't have long cords so you had to sit on the floor, almost right next to the console in order to play the game. Except for the NES, the TV and the VCR my dad still has all of the tech in this picture. Also, I'm not sure if you can see properly, but I'm also wearing Ninja Turtles socks! I'm such a late '80s/early '90s kid!

In the picture of me playing the game, you might be able to see that I hit the duck on screen. But, the picture above shows what happens if you miss a duck. Or two ducks if you're playing with two ducks on screen at a time. That dog was annoying if you sucked at aiming the light zapper gun at the ducks. He laughed at you. Alot. Of course as the years went on and the wires for the controllers and light zapper gun started getting older, it became harder to hit the ducks in this game, which caused alot of frustration for my siblings and I because we didn't know why the zapper gun wasn't working properly anymore. 

I don't have much to say about Super Mario Bros. because, well, it's Super Mario Bros. I don't need to say much about it. Plus I'll be tackling Super Mario All-Stars for the SNES at some point because I have alot more memories playing that and watching my family play that. So I'll talk about Super Mario Bros. more in that post. But this is the only way I played Duck Hunt so I thought I'd talk about that more in this post. 

And that my friends is all I have for you today. This is how things are going to be here at Josh's Nostalgia Corner. Just quick posts, thinking about particular memories, showing off pictures of the past, and talking about the stuff I watched, played, and read from my childhood. I'll be back soon with another post. I don't know when yet, but this is something I'm going to do whenever I feel like doing it. So it could be tomorrow or next week or even two weeks. Until then have a great day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.