Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode 17 "Those Old Scientists" and 18 "Under the Cloak of War" (2023) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay for a Friday. Today I have two episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to talk about today thanks to Paramount's decision to drop the crossover episode with Lower Decks, "Those Old Scientists" early because they screened it at San Diego Comic-Con on Sunday. And because I don't have Paramount+ or Crave, I had to wait until last night to watch it, along with the second episode that CTV Sci-Fi Channel aired last night. So, as per usual there will be spoilers most likely for those of you who haven't watched the two episodes yet. Let's get into it.

If you've been reading this blog, or my previous blog, The Review Basement, or you know me in real life, you know that I'm not a fan of Star Trek: Lower Decks because the humour started to be a bit too much and I found I wasn't able to get into the stories and connect with the characters. That's a personal thing for me, and in no way reflects on the writers, animators, and voice actors who make the show. So when it was announced about six months ago that we'd be getting a Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks crossover during season two of Strange New Worlds, I had mixed feelings on it just because, well, it's a comedy and SNW isn't. Plus crossovers can go either way as we've seen with other crossovers on television since television began in the late '40s and early '50s. Especially ones that got big like the later Arrowverse crossovers.

"Those Old Scientists" was a great episode. My biggest problem with it is that it got a bit too meta for the kind of show that Strange New Worlds usually is, but it fits right in line with what Lower Decks is. It just felt really weird to me. Same with the gag at the end where the Enterprise and her crew are in animation and they're aware of it through the Orion hurricanes that they made from the delaq that the Orion captain, Caras had given them as Mariner had tried to make the drink without the delaq earlier in the episode, using Tendi's recipe, for Uhura and Ortegas, in the officer's lounge. It was funny as hell, but it felt more like a Lower Decks gag than something we would normally see on SNW.

My favourite part is when Mariner, played by her voice actor, Tawny Newsome, arrives on the Enterprise after transporting herself through the time portal, she and Boimler, played by his regular voice actor, Jack Quaid, are standing around in Pike's office, and Mariner is like, "I'm making this 100% profesh (professional) but I was thoroughly unprepared for how hot young Spock was going to be", Boimler replies, "Yeah he's just full of surprises" and Mariner just continues with, "Like what? The body, the face, the ears, what?". It's such a Mariner thing to point out on Lower Decks and yet I'm sure some of the ladies, besides Nurse Chapel of courses, have noticed that Spock is attractive.

I also loved it when Boimler and Mariner were in the shuttle and Boimler shouts, "Holy Q!" and Mariner says, "Don't yell Q! They haven't met him yet. They had a kind of a Trelane thing going on". Lol. I laughed so hard at that, considering they were the only ones on the shuttle, though La'an was about to nab them before they could steal the shuttle. 

Speaking of Mariner and Boimler, while Tawny and Jack did a wonderful job playing the characters in live action, due to the fact that they're usually animated characters, they're more subdued in terms of their movements and personalities. Jack still gets Boimler's mannerisms down perfectly, including the Boimler Run, but they aren't as animated as they usually are.

Overall, this was a fantastic episode. It's perfect for those who have never seen Lower Decks, and it's perfect for people who love Lower Decks. It was also perfect for me, as I used to love Lower Decks, but don't anymore, but am a huge SNW fan, as you know quite well by now, given that I'm reviewing the show week to week as each episode airs. Now, let's talk about season 2, episode 8 (episode 18), "Under the Cloak of War".

"Under the Cloak of War" is a title that is very reminiscent of a number of episodes from later seasons of Deep Space Nine. And it actually deals with some of the same issues that DS9 dealt with during the Dominion War arc and in the first couple of seasons of the show. Except this time it's the survivors of the skirmish on J'Gal between the Federation and the Klingons, instead of the Bajorans and Cardassians. I'm not going to make too many comparisons between this episode and those DS9 episodes because I understand that not everybody reading this post has seen DS9. I just wanted to make that observation while I was thinking of it.

One of the things that I love about this episode is that it's focused on M'Benga and Chapel, but Ortegas is involved as well being that she was a pilot during the Federation-Klingon War of 2256-2257, as presented in season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery. Because this episode makes the story about the characters rather than about the war itself, it makes the weight of what they went through so much more palpable. And because of that, it makes the story more effective than it would've otherwise.

The idea of a Klingon defector is a fascinating one because it's not something we've seen really. Especially not one who has the reputation that Ambassador Dak'Rah has in this episode. Speaking of Rah, his demeanor reminds me of a few Klingons from later in the Star Trek timeline, though he is definitely unlike any Klingon we've ever seen before. 

While I feel like the flashbacks didn't really do much to add more than the expressions on M'Benga and Chapel's faces did during the dinner scene in Pike's quarters, they were interesting to see, since we didn't get much battlefield stuff in Discovery, or much of the war in general for that matter, and it was great seeing Clint Howard back. He played Commander Buck Martinez, the chief medical officer of the field hospital that Chapel and M'Benga worked at on J'Gal. Of course Clint is not only the brother of Ron Howard, but he's a veteran of over two hundred films and TV shows, and he's Star Trek royalty as he's popped in and out of franchise alot over the years, starting when he was a child, playing Balok of the First Federation in the first season of TOS back in 1966. 

Of course the majority of the Enterprise crew didn't fight in the war because Starfleet had ordered Pike to stay out of the fighting in case things went south. So they don't understand what M'Benga, Chapel, and Ortegas went through during that time, or that having Rah onboard is severely affecting them mentally and emotionally. 

I won't spoil the end of the episode, but it was intense and M'Benga is going to need therapy for a really long time. It's likely that this is the reason that M'Benga is replaced by Mark Piper and then Doctor McCoy in TOS. 

Overall both of these episodes were fantastic. "Those Old Scientists" was my favourite of the two, but both were excellent. I was talking about it with my buddy, Aaron, and this season has had some real tonal whiplash, particularly in this back half of the season. I mean, next week's episode is called "Subspace Rhapsody", and it's a musical, which is the complete opposite of where we were with "Under the Cloak of War". So that's gonna be lots of fun.

That my friends is it for me for this week. I'll be back next week for my review of next week's musical episode of SNW, and of the next volume of the Star Wars: Dark Forces graphic novellas series. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Star Wars: Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire (1997) Novella Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Because Paramount decided to drop episode 17 (season 2, episode 7) of Strange New Worlds early thanks to the screening at Comic-Con they did on Sunday, I have two episodes to watch tonight and review. But, I also don't have a whole lot of time tomorrow because of my Cardiology appointment tomorrow afternoon. So, instead of doing two separate episode reviews, I'm going to do one mega review which will cover episodes 17 and 18, and that will come out tomorrow evening sometime. Right now though I'm here to review the first of three novellas that Dark Horse Comics published alongside Boulevard Books, as a tie in to the 1995 PC/PlayStation game, Star Wars: Dark Forces, Soldier for the Empire. This volume covers Kyle Katarn's backstory and what is essentially the first mission of the game. There will be spoilers, just because there wouldn't be much to talk about otherwise. So let's get into it!

Reading Soldier for the Empire was a unique experience. While I've played Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast on the PC when I was in high school, I've never played the original Dark Forces game before. It came out in 1995, at a time where my family didn't own a computer yet, and I wasn't into Star Wars yet as I hadn't seen the Original Trilogy yet, and Episode I was still four years away from being released. And when this novella came out, I didn't know that Star Wars comics had been coming out since I'd had gotten the third issue of Dark Empire just a few years earlier. The first time I came across this book was in 1999 when I got the second issue of the Phantom Menace comic book adaptation and in the back of the issue was a checklist, with images, of the collected editions that were available at that time.

Soldier for the Empire isn't actually a comic book either. It's a graphic novella. It's only seven chapters long, and there are beautifully painted illustrations every few pages. Similar to how the Hardy Boys books of the late '50s, and the '60s and '70s had illustrations sprinkled in. Unlike the ones in the Hardy Boys books though, the illustrations in this novella are full colour and painted. Which is neat.

I honestly don't have much to say about the story. Like I said earlier, this novella is only seven chapters long and covers the game's backstory as well as the first mission, which was Kyle Katarn going to Danuta to get the second piece of the Death Star plans while Bria Tharen got the Toprawa Death Star plans (this is Legends so Rogue One doesn't exist yet) to send to Leia just before A New Hope starts. It's good, I'm just not used to this type of storytelling as I've never read a novella before. I read comic books or novels, not something that is between the two in this case. And because the story is so short the end feels abrupt. 

Kyle Katarn is a character that I didn't grow up reading about. As I mentioned I didn't know about Dark Forces when I was a kid, and I didn't know about Star Wars comics, besides Dark Empire #3 either. And because Katarn didn't show up in the novels until the end of The New Jedi Order, a period where I wasn't keeping up with new Star Wars novels, I had no clue who he was until I played Jedi Outcast in high school. And even then, his backstory wasn't known to me until I read this novella. He's a fine character, but I think he's better in the games as this book doesn't give the reader enough time with him for me to really latch onto him. Maybe the other two novellas will change my mind on that, but this first one hasn't endeared me to the character of Kyle Katarn the way the games would. 

Overall, this was a good read. It's not the greatest and I would definitely recommend playing the games for more of Katarn's story because there just isn't enough material here to get a really good sense of the character. I still enjoyed reading it all these years after discovering its existence.

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for a double dose of Strange New Worlds tomorrow evening and then who knows after that. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 6 "Lost in Translation" Episode Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I had a visitor this morning so I didn't have a chance to come on here and talk about this week's episode of Strange New Worlds. But, I'm here now, so let's talk about this week's episode, called, "Lost in Translation". There will be spoilers, so if you're watching the show and haven't seen this episode yet, please do so before reading this review. Otherwise, enjoy. Let's get into it!

The biggest thing that I wanted to talk about is the fact that Kirk, both Kirks actually, show up in this episode and it's James T. Kirk's first time meeting Pike, Uhura, and Spock. Him meeting Pike was cool, but the biggest thing for me, as a Trekkie, is seeing Kirk and Spock meet for the first time, and Kirk and Uhura meeting for the first time. Given the alternate universe setting for the 2009 film, where Kirk meets Pike, Spock, and Uhura for the first time also, it was fun seeing how Kirk and Spock met and how Kirk and Uhura met for the first time in the primary Star Trek timeline. And unlike in the 2009 movie, Kirk gets along with both Spock and Uhura pretty well. Mostly because Kirk and Spock bond over the fact that Sam Kirk can be irritating, as we saw in last week's episode. But why do Kirk and Uhura meet?

While the Enterprise, and the USS Farragut are on a mission to repair a deuterium refueling station that Starfleet had built in a nebula rich with deuterium, the fuel that powers starship's engines, Uhura is affected by hallucinations which are caused by...well, you'll have to watch the episode to find out because I'm not going to spoil the ending for you. One of the hallucinations that Uhura ends up having is of a Zombiefied Hemmer, who was killed at the end of season 1. The other is of the shuttle accident that killed her family, which was established back in season 1, episode 2. The aftermath of it anyway, since Uhura mentioned earlier in the episode that she hadn't seen the crash site. Both M'Benga and Chapel believe that the hallucinations are being caused by Uhura's lack of sleep, but Kirk believes her and helps her to figure it out, which is really cool to see.

Honestly, this is the Kirk that I know and love from TOS, rather than the stereotype that non-Trekkies made him in the most recent Star Trek movies that came out in 2009, 2013, and 2016. And it was finally great to have him back since both times we'd seen Paul Wesley as Kirk, aside from on a com screen at the end of season 2, episode 3, it was an alternate timeline. Honestly, I really like Paul Wesley as Kirk. I was skeptical when he was first announced last year, but he's proven himself to be a great addition to the Star Trek Universe and a worthy successor to William Shatner.

The B-plot of this episode has Una teamed up with Pelia and both Rebecca Romijn and Carol Kane had great acting chemistry together. They only had three scenes together but it's a dynamic I'm hoping to see more of later in the season, and maybe in season 3 if they don't kill off Pelia at the end of the season like they did with Hemmer at the end of this season.

Overall, this was yet another excellent episode. I am so happy that we're getting quality Star Trek every week again like we got when I was growing up in the '90s and early 2000s. With all the streaming services in turmoil right now, it's probably not going to be long before the franchise goes dormant again, but until it does I'm gonna enjoy it while it lasts.

And that my friends is it for this week. As you may have noticed I didn't do any other posts this week. I decided to take the week off, except for this review. But Jonathan lent me some Star Wars comics from the '90s and early 2000s so expect reviews for all of them coming out in the next few weeks. But, until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

A Storm of Swords (2000) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay. So today I'm here to review A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin, which came out in 2000. I'm not sure how much I actually have to say about this book, so this might be a short review. There will also be some spoilers, but given that the Red Wedding happened in the third season of Game of Thrones, and everyone who has watched the show knows what that is, basically the spoilers aren't really spoilers at this point. So let's get into it.

I'm going to be honest with you. I think that this is probably the weakest of the three books that I've read in the series. It's still really good, and Martin did a wonderful job of developing this world, but with the exception of Joffrey's death, the Red Wedding, and Tywin Lannister dying at the hands of Tyrion, not a whole lot happens in this book. Winterfell is basically gone since the Boltons took it from Theon Greyjoy at the end of the last book, and several of the storylines are pretty weak compared to how and where they started in the first two books.

I think the weakest storylines in the book are Arya's, Bran's, and Sansa's. Sansa's story started out strongly, but was ultimately weakened by her forced marriage to Tyrion, not long before Joffrey's death at his wedding to Margaery, and then suddenly she's with Littlefinger at the Eyrie, under the name Alayne Stone, Stone being the female equivalent of Snow for illegitimate daughters in Westeros, and it doesn't really make much sense. I think what I dislike about Arya's and Bran's storylines is the traveling aspect, given that both characters are constantly traveling, never staying in one place for too long. Being that the traveling part is what I like the least about The Lord of the Rings, I'm not surprised that I don't like the aspect of either Arya's or Bran's storylines. I think it's also because of who each character is traveling with. I've never liked Sandor Clegane, known as the Hound, and nobody else Arya travels with are likeable characters either, so it's really hard for me to be invested in Arya's storyline.

While I like Bran's companions, Hodor, and Jojen and Myra Reed, again, it's that uncertainty of their journey that I find difficult to invest in, along with the more magical, and mystical elements attached to his storyline. Even Martin has said that Bran was the hardest character to write for, according to his interview in Science Fiction Weekly magazine from 2000. Just the whole magic stuff is really hard to deal with in such a realistic setting compared to the world of Tolkien. 

I think the strongest storylines though are Jon Snow's and Jaime Lannister's. While a good portion of Jaime's storyline also involves him traveling quite a bit, the dynamic between him and Brienne of Tarth, and Jaime's growth from that dynamic, makes the storyline more interesting than Bran's and Arya's. Jon's is just brilliant. The Night's Watch, the Wildlings, and all of the intrigue beyond the Wall had me riveted anytime a Jon chapter came up. His relationship with Ygritte was also pretty great too. It almost felt like Jon's time with the Wildlings, and with Ygritte, made him grow as a person more than his time as a member of the Night's Watch did in the first two books.

Of course, Tyrion is still my favourite character. Which is why his storyline in this book was hard for me to get through. It was good, but he really got put through the ringer in this book. Especially with being forced to marry Sansa, and then learning that Tywin had lied about Tyrion's first wife, Tysha, AND being accused of murdering Joffrey. That's rough for sure. As for Daenerys, I feel like she's lost her way. I guess I agree with Jorah's assessment that Dany is wasting her time in capturing the cities of Slaver's Bay when she should be amassing an army to move on Westeros. 

Overall, despite my feelings about it, A Storm of Swords is still a very good book. It's well written, it's just that I disagree with the direction that Martin took some of the surviving characters from the first book. But I suppose that such is life in Westeros.

That's going to be it for me for this week. I'll be back next week with more reviews and other posts. Besides my review of next week's episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds I'm not sure what I'll be posting exactly, but I have things to consider. So until then have a great rest of your weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 5, "Charades" TV Episode Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay. It's been a crazy week, which is why I haven't posted anything on the blog since last week's Strange New Worlds episode review. Which I'm back to do once again, because it's Friday and a new episode came out yesterday. This week I'm reviewing season 2, episode 5, which is called "Charades". I'm giving you a quick spoiler warning because I got stuff to talk about with this episode and it's much easier to do so if I don't have to avoid spoilers. Let's get into it.

"Charades" is very similar to season 1, episode 5, "Spock Amok" in that it's a major Spock/T'Pring episode, and the Enterprise is on half duty rotation, which isn't complete automation, but also isn't all hands on deck either. We've actually seen Voyager do this a few times, most notably in the season five premiere, "Night". The difference is that Spock is turned completely human after him and Nurse Chapel get into a shuttle accident, involving beings from another dimension, who take a very customer service style approach to life. Which is completely insane, but works for this episode. 

One of the weirdest parts of this episode is when the human crew teaches Spock how to pretend to be Vulcan because T'Pring's parents have decided that it's time for her and Spock to have their engagement dinner since the Enterprise is going to be in orbit of Vulcan and Spock's duties aren't preventing him from doing so. It's weird because Spock's friends were able to teach him how to be a Vulcan, better than a Vulcan could. 

I also loved the montage of Spock being human, where it showed him spending time with his friends, learning how to cook, eating bacon for the first time, and ready to kick Sam Kirk's ass for leaving a mess on the briefing room table. Yes, that did happen, and it was great. One of the things that SNW does that TOS just couldn't do within the restrictions of 1960s television, is focusing on Spock's human side. So much of the Spock centric episodes from TOS focused on him being Vulcan unless he's under the influence of some alien lifeform or spores or whatever the case may be. And while early episodes depicted Spock as being more emotional, as he smiles in "The Cage", and smirks in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the series as a whole did very little to explore his human side. To the point where it was hard to remember that Spock is half-Human and half-Vulcan, not a full Vulcan.

Speaking of full Vulcans, I swear they're super jerks these days. This trend actually started all the way back in "Broken Bow", which is the first episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, in 2001, but it's really become a thing in the modern era of Star Trek. Particularly in Strange New Worlds. I love it because it shows a side of Vulcan society that we never actually got to focus on in the '90s shows, even though Tuvok was a main character on Star Trek: Voyager, and we spent alot of time with him.

The relationships on this show never cease to amaze me. They're just much richer than they were on TOS in the '60s. As Wil Wheaton said to Jess Bush in this week's episode of The Ready Room, in the '60s, Christine Chapel was created in service of Spock, but on SNW Chapel is her own, independent, person with her own storyline and character development. Which I love. I think I said this in one of my season one reviews, but I think that Chapel was fine on TOS, but there wasn't much about her and by the time Star Trek II came around she had basically disappeared, aside from a quick cameo in Star Trek IV in 1986, most likely due to the fact that by that point Majel was Roddenberry's wife and he wasn't involved in the movies after Star Trek: The Motion Picture had come out in 1979. Here though they really fleshed Chapel out and given us one of my favourite Star Trek characters of all time. 

Because of this, Spock and Chapel's relationship is one of my favourites in all of Star Trek. Of course, I think this is the fastest relationship in all of Star Trek, since it didn't take seven seasons and four movies to get them together, and we know neither of them are going to get killed off since they both need to be around for TOS. Instead it took a season and a half and him and T'Pring to decide to take some time apart for them to kiss. I know they kissed in season 1, episode 7, but that was a ruse to save the ship from Captain Angel. This time it was a full on, genuine, make out session. The start of one anyway, since that's where the episode ends. It makes TOS a bit weird because of how Chapel was portrayed on that show, but I don't care, because I love the chemistry between these two characters. I can't wait to see what the writers have in store for them next.

Overall this was a fun episode that was pretty comedic and extremely entertaining and emotional. Especially since it had storylines that I've been invested in since the first season. Now that we're at the halfway point in the season, I just want to say that I'm loving season 2 so far. While I wasn't as big of a fan of La'an and Kirk's time travel episode as other people were, there hasn't been a single bad episode all season so far. And that's because Henry Alonso Meyer and Akiva Goldsman are Star Trek fans, Trekkies if you will. And honestly, I think that really makes all the difference because they know what's come before with all the shows and movies that are set after SNW, and so they can pick and choose what to include, or what piece of background information that they need to update for modern day if the TOS version no longer fits. And I'm very glad that we have actual Star Trek fans in charge of the franchise now.

That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow to review A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin since I finished reading it this afternoon. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 4, "Among the Lotus Eaters" Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay for a Friday. Today I'm here to talk about this week's episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, "Among the Lotus Eaters". I don't have a whole lot to say about this episode, simply because there wasn't as much weight to it as there had been for the first three episodes of the season. And, as usual, with these less heavy episodes, there won't be very many spoilers for it. So let's get into it.

I really enjoyed this episode. Mainly because it deals with things that we can all relate to. Loss, deciding whether it's worth it to keep the memories that are painful to you, and the choice to make a romantic relationship work inspite of the careers you and your partner have chosen for yourselves. I find it interesting to have an episode bookended by scenes between Pike and Batel, where it opens with them trying to have a quiet dinner together, but their work getting in the way, and Pike, discouraged, calling it off, and then the episode ending with him apologizing to her after the ordeal that him, La'an, and M'Benga went through over the course of the episode made him realize that Batel was too important to him for him to let the relationship go.

I think one of the reasons that this works so well is because they see their problems stemming from the outcome of Una's trial, as Batel was the arresting officer, and part of the prosecution, which lost, due to the loophole discovered by Neera Ketoul at the end of "Ad Astra per Aspera". Batel even names Pasalk, that nasty Vulcan admiral that seems to have it out for Spock and Pike, by name when she's talking to Pike after her conversation with Pasalk. Making things personal for the characters, is one of the things I love about fiction. SNW has done a really good job so far of making things personal for the crew, without overdoing to the point that it becomes unnatural, as it's happened on most of the CW comic book based shows.

What I find the most interesting is that the episode expanded upon an event only mentioned in the very first pilot of TOS, "The Cage", which starred Jeffrey Hunter as Pike, Majel Barrett as Una (then only referred to as Number One), and Leonard Nimoy as Spock. We never saw the event spoken of on screen, though it was depicted in issue #3 of the comic book series, Star Trek: Early Voyages in 1997. So it was interesting to find out more about stuff that happened before "The Cage".

Overall this was another great episode. That's one of the things that I love about SNW. The show comes out with consistently solid episodes, even if they're ones that I personally don't enjoy as much, there isn't a bad episode of this series so far. 

That's going to be it for me for this week my friends. I'll be back next week with more reviews and posts. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Remembering Rugrats

Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing well enough I suppose. Apologies for the lack of content this week, but it's actually been pretty busy. So about a year and a half ago I got three boxes full of VHS tapes from someone I know and one of the tapes was Rugrats: A Rugrats Vacation, which was released by Paramount Home Video in 1997. I decided to pop it into my VCR last night just because I haven't seen Rugrats in about 25 years, give or take a year. The three episodes on the tape, were the direct-to-video episode, "Vacation", "Ice Cream Mountain" from season 2, and "Graham Canyon" from season 1. I'm writing this not to review those three episodes, but to talk about Rugrats in general and my memories of watching the show back in the '90s. So let's get into it.

 Nickelodeon wasn't a thing here in Canada back in the '90s. Many of the shows that were on that network in the U.S. ended up on YTV or Family Channel, depending on the decade, but very few of the popular shows from the '90s actually made it up here for whatever reason. And the majority of the ones that did, often wouldn't air here until either a few years after the show started in the U.S. or wouldn't show up here until the end of the '90s or the very beginning of the 2000s. And oftentimes they didn't even make it through the entire series, as they'd only be on YTV or Family Channel for a year or two and then get pulled never to appear on Canadian Television again. This practice was still in effect by the time The Amanda Show started airing in 1999, with the series not coming to Canada until 2002 when it began airing on Family Channel. Though it had stopped by the time that Zoey 101 and iCarly began in the mid 2000s, with Zoey 101 airing on Family Channel and iCarly airing on YTV. Rugrats is another series that got delayed.

Airing on YTV during the early hours of the block known as The Zone, Rugrats didn't come to Canada until 1994 and aired until 2004 when the series ended. And yet, of all the shows that I watched on YTV, Rugrats is the one that I watched the longest. While I only got to watch it when I was in the hospital or at Nana's and Grandpa's house for the first year and a half to two years of the show's Canadian run, since we didn't have cable from 1993 until 1996, I watched it all the time from 1994 until 2000 or 2001. While I didn't watch the spin-off/sequel, All Growed Up!, my brother and sister did. I think it's because, by the time All Growed Up! started in 2003, I just wasn't watching YTV anymore. I would occasionally tape movies off it, like Sailor Moon R: The Movie - The Promise of the Rose, and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, but by 2003, I was in high school and I had already started to watch YTV less and less by the time Digimon started in 1999, so shows like All Growed Up! didn't interest me anymore.

I also don't actually remember much about Rugrats after Rugrats in Paris: The Movie came out in 2000. I remember Dil being born in The Rugrats Movie and I vaguely remember episodes with Dil in them, but I think I stopped watching the show either just before or just after Rugrats in Paris came out. I'm pretty sure it was before because, by the time 2000 came around, I was already watching shows like Radio Active, Animorphs, Pokemon, and Digimon, all of them on later in the evening, though Digimon was on during the final hour of The Zone.

Watching the three episodes of Rugrats on VHS last night reminded me just how much fun the show is. And what makes it even more entertaining is the cast of adult characters who look after the babies, and Angelica. I mean, don't get me wrong, Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil, and Angelica are hilarious, but their parents, and grandfather, Didi and Stu Pickles, Lou Pickles, Drew and Charlotte Pickles, and Betty and Howard DeVille, are even more hilarious. Which is what I remember from watching the show as a kid. They seem negligent, but the babies never come to any real harm, even when they fall or something falls on their heads, usually dropped on them by Angelica. I remember seeing the show when I was a kid and thinking that I wouldn't get along with someone like Angelica. Nor would I have gotten along with most of the adults on the show either, except maybe Didi. 

I only vaguely remember what the Pickles's (Stu, Didi, and Tommy) house looks like. The episodes I watched last night didn't feature the house at all, except in the classic opening sequence, so I only kind of remember what it looks like. Houses in '90s cartoons always looked really weird, but cool at the same time, and I kinda feel like that started with the house on The Simpsons, which started only less than two years before Rugrats did. Looking at pictures of the house on the Rugrats Wiki though, it does remind me of the Simpsons's house a little bit. Mostly because of the colour of the walls.

When the show first started on YTV in 1994, I think it was still while the Adam West Batman series and Power Rangers were still airing at 5 and 5:30 respectively. Power Rangers was removed from YTV prior to the second season airing in late 1994, but I'm pretty sure Rugrats started just before that. I remember watching both shows on The Zone at the same time, with Rugrats airing at 3:30, before shows like Samurai Pizza Cats came on. If I remember correctly, reruns of Alvin and the Chipmunks were on before Rugrats and then Captain Planet and Samurai Pizza Cats were on after it.

The thing is it's been almost 30 years since Mighty Morphin Power Rangers first started and 29 years since Rugrats started airing here in Canada so my memory of what exactly was airing on YTV at the time that the show started isn't going to be 100% accurate. Especially because there's very little video record of  YTV's schedule from 1994 to 1996, so, aside from a video on YTV's history with the Power Rangers franchise, which shows an early schedule, showing Dennis the Menace (the 1986 animated series) on at 4, Captain Planet and the Planeteers on at 4:30, Batman on at 5, and then Power Rangers on at 5:30, there's no way to tell what was on at 3 or at 3:30. And for all I know, that schedule might've been from early 1994. I'm just going by what I personally remember from that time period.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I'd forgotten how much fun Rugrats is. I'm glad I was able to relive my memories from when I watched it brand new in the mid '90s. But I think that's where I'm going to leave off for today. I wanna do a whole post on YTV's The Zone and talk about the other shows that I watched on there. But for now, I'll be back soon with more blog posts and reviews. So until then have a great evening and I'll talk to you all later. Take care.