The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series (2022/2023) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back with another book review. This time I'm actually taking a look at a non-fiction book. As you can see from the title of the book, it's about the making of The Big Bang Theory. It's The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series by Jessica Radloff. The author interviewed the entire cast, including guest stars like Wil Wheaton, Mark Hamill, and Bob Newhart, as well as the show's co-creators, Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, the showrunners, Steve Molaro and Steve Holland, and other members of the production crew. I can't really give a spoiler warning, because it's non-fiction, but, I'll be talking about the show and my personal history with it. So, let's get into it.

The Big Bang Theory is one of my all time favourite shows, and my favourite comedy, with The Goldbergs being my second favourite comedy. The characters are so relateable, and it's about geeks and how we struggle to live in this world that is mostly anti-geek. This book illustrates that extremely well. Particularly how the show's creators and writers talk about how they approached each character in the writing process.

When the show was on the air from 2007 until 2019, I didn't follow the production of it very closely. So all the information in this book about the writing on the show, and how the writers came to certain decisions, was completely new to me. I even didn't really know that much about the show's creators. I knew who Chuck Lorre was as he'd worked on Roseanne, and created Two and a Half Men and Mike & Molly among many others, as well as being the guy who created the theme song for the original 1987 Ninja Turtles series. But, like, I didn't know that Lorre got rid of his TV in 1969 after Star Trek had been canceled along with another show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967-1969), and then just didn't have one until the late '70s. I also didn't know that co-creator, Bill Prady, was diagnosed with Autism during the third or fourth season of Big Bang, or that Steve Molaro and Steve Holland had worked at Nickelodeon on Zoey 101 and iCarly before being hired as writers and showrunners on Big Bang.

I also gained so much more respect for the show and the people who made it for how socially conscious they were at a time where that wasn't such a big deal. For example, they knew they needed more women on the show, which is why Maria Ferrari and Tara Hernandez were hired as writers, and Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik were cast as Bernadette and Amy in seasons 3 and 4. But the writers and producers supported Melissa Rauch when she was pregnant, which isn't really something you hear about when it comes to production crews and the heads of a show. Especially after hearing so much negativity about the producers and head of the franchise throughout the history of Star Trek in the '90s and early to mid 2000s. Even Wil Wheaton, who had been trepidacious about doing the show when he did his first appearance in season 3, admitted that the producers on Big Bang were the best he'd ever worked for on a show, citing his bad experience working on Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1987 to 1990 as being what affected his view of showrunners and producers.

As for the writing, they never wanted these characters to do things how we're told we're supposed to do them. Which is why Sheldon and Amy's relationship slowly progressed and didn't become sexual (and even then only once a year) until season 9 and they didn't get married until the end of season 11. It's why Leonard and Penny had so many ups and downs in their relationship from their big breakup in season 3, to them getting back together in season 5, to them getting engaged at the end of season 7 in the weirdest way possible, because that's how humans work.

They also explained why Raj didn't end up with anybody at the end of the series too. Sometimes we don't find the love of our lives. Sometimes we're fine being single and just spending time with our friends, if we have friends who are able to spend time with us despite their busy lives. All too often TV shows and movies, and other entertainment mediums, tell us we need to find our partner in our 20s and 30s. That we have to get married, have kids, and make a certain amount of money to be considered successful. The Big Bang Theory didn't do that. Not entirely anyway. Sure, Leonard and Penny, Howard and Bernadette, and Sheldon and Amy all got married, and they all had kids (Sheldon and Amy were revealed to have had kids on Young Sheldon via voiceover), but not Raj. With Raj they showed someone who wanted to find love, but, wasn't able to find exactly what he was looking for, outside of his friendship with Howard. Because, sometimes, when you have the right friends, that's all the love you need. Which is why I'm okay if I don't find the love of my life. I have the best group of friends that I could ever have asked for, and that's enough for me. If the right person comes along, sure I'll be happy, but if that never happens, I'll be okay.

This book also delves into the hardships the cast and crew went through during the 12 years the show was on the air. Which is interesting. But, what really made me love the book is that the writers admitted that the stuff with Wolowitz early on in the show, before his relationship with Bernadette helped him grow out of being the sleaze that he was, didn't work and were things they wished they hadn't done. They also admitted that many jokes in the early seasons of the show would never have flown on TV today. Because when the show first started back in 2007, social media was just starting to become a thing, so the show didn't have as much scrutiny as the later seasons ended up having. On top of that though they said that they learned what not to do as the series went on, and grew as writers as a result. So that was really cool to see just how candid everybody was.

I have to admit that I stopped watching The Big Bang Theory as regularly as I did when the show first started. Not really because I didn't like it as much, though I did feel they didn't do enough with Raj once Emily Sweeney (Laura Spencer) was out of the picture. But, the real reason I stopped watching the show regularly is because by the time seasons 10 and 11 came out in 2016 and 2017 the Arrowverse shows had really taken off with Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow starting in late 2015 and early 2016 respectively, and then Star Trek returned to television with Discovery in 2017, and it was on on the same night as The Big Bang Theory, and during the same start time. I was also still watching The Goldbergs every week as well. I still watched Big Bang for the big episodes like the 200th episode in season 9, Sheldon's proposal to Amy in season 10, Sheldon and Amy's wedding in season 11, and the series finale in season 12. I just wasn't watching it week to week the way I had been up until 2016.

This book is not only a testament to the people who worked on the show for 12 years, but it's also a reminder. A reminder that shows like The Big Bang Theory is just as important as any superhero show or any Sci-Fi or Fantasy show. Because while it is a sitcom, the heart of the show is the characters. We root for Penny, Leonard, Bernadette, Howard, Amy, Sheldon, and Raj because we're them and they're us. Even if their successes aren't what's the norm on TV. They reminded us, and continue to remind us that it's okay to be single, it's okay to be neuro-diverse, it's okay to be a geek, it's okay to make mistakes and then learn from them, and it's okay to be different from other people. Which is a message I really like, as someone who is neuro-diverse, physically disabled, geeky, single, and who makes mistakes, but then learns from them.

If you're a fan of Big Bang, I highly recommend getting your hands on this book. I loved it. I have the 2023 paperback edition, which came out earlier this month, so it has additional pictures courtesy of the cast and crew that weren't in the 2022 hardcover, and it also includes a little tidbit that on April 12th of this year, Warner Bros. Discovery announced a new spin-off of the show is in development. Young Sheldon was the first, but there's no details on what the new show is about given that almost right after that announcement was made the writer's strike started, and then the actor's strike shortly after that. So we'll see what happens in the future.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I hadn't actually planned to do too many blog posts this week because I had planned on getting my next Covid shot. So, I guess, maybe, I'll be back for a comic book review later this week and maybe a movie review at some point too. We'll see. But, until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S01E01 "Strange New Worlds" (2022) TV Episode Review

 Hey everyone, happy Friday! How's it going? I'm pretty good. So, I'm back for the final Star Trek pilot/premiere episode review, in terms of both what I have access to, and the fact that SNW was the last Star Trek series to premiere up to this point. Of course, I already have a review for this episode up on the blog from when it originally aired last year, but this review will focus on things that I noticed upon my rewatch of the episode last night. So, let's get into it.

Television hasn't really changed for me much over the years. I usually don't revisit shows after I've seen them, unless I have them on DVD or Blu-ray. One of the reasons TNG was one of my favourite shows is because I had a decent amount of episodes on VHS, both retail releases, and episodes taped off the TV, so I could rewatch them even if I didn't have access to reruns of the show. Same goes for other shows that I grew up watching. And even though the majority of new shows I watch are Disney+ shows, or Hulu shows that come out on Disney+ here in Canada, my brain hasn't quite grasped the fact that, as long as the shows are still on Disney+, I can go back and rewatch them whenever I want. And I think that's just because most modern shows are a single story told over six, eight or ten episodes that make up the season. But with SNW, which I have the first season of on Blu-ray, the series is episodic. So I can pop in disc 2 of the Blu-ray and watch "Spock Amok", as an example, whenever I want, without having to do a full season watchthrough. But with something like Goosebumps, Ahsoka, Only Murders in the Building or The Mandalorian, it's alot harder because each episode is only a piece of the story. 

Up to this point Star Trek has had a rough go of it since Discovery debuted in 2017. The first couple of seasons of both Discovery and Picard were almost nothing like Star Trek. They were gratuitously dark, gritty, pessimistic, with mostly undeveloped new characters, and in the case of Picard, out of character legacy characters. Lower Decks resorted to crude humour and general meanness to attract an audience and it worked because Lower Decks is, unfortunately, the Star Trek with the most mass appeal. Prodigy suffered from Nickelodeon's stupid scheduling pattern and all of the problems that plagued the Nickelodeon era of Power Rangers in the 2010s. Then came SNW and it was a huge breath of fresh air because, well, it was Star Trek. Sure, modern day TV drama beats were present, but the characters actually liked each other, and generally had good outlooks on life. Except for La'an. But, given what we know about her now after two seasons and twenty episodes, she has a reason for being the way she is. And the show was episodic, though each character had an overarching story that carried throughout each season of the show, and they all grew and developed as characters in a way that seemed to elude the characters of Discovery. Though that show did get better as it rebooted itself by sending the USS Discovery and her crew into the future, effectively ending the prequel series it started out as, it still suffers from the same problems that Michael A. Stackpole's Star Wars: X-Wing novels suffer from, an ensemble cast of characters, that doesn't work as an ensemble cast of characters.

Something I noticed upon rewatching the first episode of SNW for the first time since it aired, without commercials I might add, is that La'an and Pike's conversation at the end of the episode doesn't actually make sense. La'an apologizes to Pike for not informing him that she and Una had known each other prior to the mission on Kiley 279, as if it was a secret she'd been hiding from the crew. Except, the way the episode is written, from the point where Pike and Spock meet La'an on the Bridge, to when they find Una and the astrophysicists that had been on the Archer with her, La'an had never given Pike a reason not to trust her, and there was no indication to us, the audience, that she was on the Enterprise for any reason other than Starfleet had assigned her to the ship as her chief of security, and had assigned her to replace Una as First Officer until they recovered her. It was as much a twist to me, as a member of the audience, as it was to Pike in the show, when it was revealed that La'an and Una knew each other and that it was Una who had rescued La'an after the Gorn had killed La'an's entire family. So that whole conversation didn't make sense within the context of what we were given earlier in the episode. But, it is a good way of seeing how La'an and Pike interact with each other.

I thought it was funny at the end of the episode when Admiral April told Pike and Spock that Starfleet was changing General Order One to the Prime Directive and Pike replies, "That'll never stick". I laughed, both times I saw this episode, because in TOS they still call the Prime Directive General Order One and use the two names interchangeably, but by the first season of TNG, which is set in 2364, it's simply the Prime Directive. I wonder if Pike's line was meant to be a tongue in cheek nod to the interchangeable term in TOS on the part of Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, and Jenny Lumet, the three writers of this episode.

Also, seeing where Pike ends up by the end of this season, and by the end of season 2, I think it makes his story here even more solid. And seeing how the crew gels with each other is cool. While Ortegas, Spock, Una, and Mitchell have been there for a while, M'Benga, Chapel, La'an, and Uhura are new, yet they all work together as if they've always known each other. Despite the fact that Uhura and Chapel meet for the very first time in this episode. Of course, we find out in season 2 why M'Benga and Chapel work so well together. 

SNW was one of Paramount's worst kept secrets. After seeing how popular Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, and Rebecca Romijn were as Pike, Spock, and Una in season 2 of Discovery and season 2 of Short Treks, the rumour that Paramount was developing a series starring those characters started circulating even before the second season of Discovery had ended. At the same time though Paramount wasn't acknowledging anything of the sort, until they suddenly did at the end of 2020. And, honestly, I didn't think this series would be very successful. Pike was an unknown character to most casual viewers of Star Trek, because despite having numerous novels and comic books dedicated to his time as the captain of the Enterprise, none of them are considered to be canon, and other than "The Cage", which didn't air until 1988, "The Menagerie", which was the original audience's look into the Star Trek that could've been since it used footage from the unaired pilot as flashback material, and the 2009 movie, set in a parallel universe and Pike being in the hands of the Romulans from the future for the vast majority of the movie, audiences didn't have much of an exposure to the character of Christopher Pike.

There are millions of Star Trek fans around the world, however as we saw with DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise, if the general audience isn't onboard, the show simply won't be successful. And that's true with any franchise in any medium. I just did not think that setting a Star Trek series on the original Enterprise during Pike's tenure as Commanding Officer would appeal to an audience that would be big enough to justify Paramount's faith in it. Especially at the time this show was announced, when Paramount+ was still CBS All-Access. They did the restructuring not long after SNW was announced. Because, let's face it, Star Trek hasn't really been that popular with the general audience since TNG went off the air in 1994. The box office numbers declined as each TNG movie came out, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise all failed to gain a new audience during their original runs, and the alternate reality films didn't even come close to making the kind of money Paramount had lost when the MCU moved from Paramount and Universal to Disney/Marvel Studios. Not to mention the current slew of shows all started on a barely surviving streaming platform.

No matter what franchise you're looking at, and no matter how big of a fanbase that franchise has, the ultimate goal of these shows and movies is to bring in a wide enough audience in order to sustain them financially, because a studio, a network, or a streaming service won't want to finance a show or series of movies if said show or movie doesn't warrant it. That's one of the reasons so many shows never make it past their first season, and why TOS was canceled back in the '60s. While there was a small, dedicated, fanbase during the show's original run from 1966-1969, the audience wasn't big enough to warrant Paramount and NBC to renew the show at the end of the third season. Especially because syndication wasn't a thing yet. Episodes would air during the season, maybe air one more time between seasons, during the summer, but that was it. Plus given the amount of negativity surrounding the other then current live action Star Trek shows on at the time, I had no faith in SNW.

I am extremely glad that I'm wrong. SNW is a fantastic show. It's my favourite of the modern era of the franchise, and it's my second favourite behind TNG. And this episode came out swinging in terms of the quality of the storytelling. I mean, we got a Prime Directive episode right out the gate, and a strong one at that. Which is a far cry from the series premieres of both Discovery and Picard. I'm also glad that Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Meyer are the showrunners because they are Star Trek fans themselves. And not just TOS fans, but they're fans of everything Star Trek. I've said this many MANY times over the last year and a half since SNW started but I'll say it again, I am very certain that they're fans of Star Trek: Early Voyages and the few novels that take place during Pike's time as the captain of the Enterprise, because there's so much in this series that I swear came from the comics and novels, which are pretty obscure.

I love SNW, and this first episode holds up extremely well, a year and a half later. It's a solid introduction to the characters, both new and legacy, and it leaves things for future episodes to build upon. We got so many dense and interesting characters, written a great group of writers, and played by an awesome cast. "Strange New Worlds" is tied with "Emissary" as the best of these pilot/premiere episodes for me.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I might be back with a review of Hocus Pocus 2 tomorrow, or I might wait until next week to do it. I haven't decided yet. So until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Hocus Pocus (1993) Movie Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back with another movie review. This time I'm taking a look at the 1993 Halloween cult classic film, Hocus Pocus. I doubt there'll be spoilers in this review, though I might do some minor ones, depending on how things go as I write it. We'll see though. If there are spoilers, this is your spoiler warning. Let's get into it.

Hocus Pocus isn't a movie that I grew up with, despite growing up in the '90s. I don't remember seeing any commercials for it on TV, I don't remember seeing any previews for it on any other Disney home video releases, though apparently there's one on the VHS for Super Mario Bros. (1993), and I never saw it at the video store or for sale at K-Mart or Zellers. It most likely aired on Family Channel at some point in the 2000s, but, I never saw it, and I never saw it on TV anywhere else either. I've actually heard more about it in the last tfour or five years than I ever did growing up. But, with it being on Disney+, I decided to give it a shot because, despite it bombing at the box office when it originally came out 30 years ago, it's gained a cult following through DVD releases and airings on various Disney owned TV channels. Which is interesting, because, normally a movie gains that following through the original home video release, in this case VHS, but, it wasn't until the DVD release, which came out in 2002, that people started to watch it.

The movie came out on July 16th, 1993, which was the same day that Free Willy came out. Though, according to Wikipedia, Hocus Pocus was ahead of Free Willy at the box office opening weekend, but obviously quickly fell behind. The thing is 1993 didn't have a ton of major box office successes. The biggest one was Jurassic Park. So it's not like Disney had any major competition that year. Maybe it's because it came out in July, and most kids maybe aren't as interested in seeing a Halloween movie in July. I don't know. 

The cast is spectacular. You have Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy, Omri Katz, Thora Birch, Vinessa Shaw, Doug Jones, Sean Murray, Jason Marsden, and Kathleen Freeman. I'm not super familiar with Bette Midler's work though she did voice Georgette the poodle in Disney's 1988 animated classic, Oliver & Company, which I have seen, and she voiced Grandmama in The Addams Family in 2019 so I have seen her in a couple of things, but nothing major. I mostly know her from her 1989 version of the 1982 song, "Wind Beneath My Wings", which I used to hear on the radio quite a bit when I was growing up. Particularly in the 2000s. I'm also not super familiar with Sarah Jessica Parker's work. I've seen her in season 4 of Glee, but I mostly know her from commercials for Sex and the City. The rest of the adult cast is great, with particular shoutouts to Doug Jones as Billy Butcherson, who is the man of a thousand faces though I know him as Saru on Star Trek: Discovery, and the late Kathleen Freeman as Max and Allison's teacher, who I know as The Penguin in The Blues Brothers (1980) and as Gloria, one of the ladies that Jake (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) gets a ride from (all Tom Jones fans) in I'll Be Home for Christmas (1998). She's the one who rips the Santa Claus beard off of him and says, "Did I hurt you Santa? Good". 

The younger cast was amazing. Omri Katz as Max, Vinessa Shaw as Allison, and Thora Birch as Dani did such an amazing job. I've seen Omri in Matinee, which also came out in 1993. He played Gene's friend, Stan. I admit I only know who Thora Birch is from an article that the November 1995 issue of Disney Adventures magazine did about the movie she was in at the time, Now and Then. Vinessa Shaw is the only one of the three main kid stars that I'm not familiar with at all. She's done a ton of movies, but I've never seen any of them. One more note to make on the cast is that Sean Murray, who everyone knows as Agent McGee on NCIS, plays the original human form of Thackery Binx, and Jason Marsden, who voices Max in A Goofy Movie, and is a major voice actor for animated TV shows, voices Binx as a cat. Marsden apparently appeared as a Ferengi in a season 4 episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which is hilarious. I'll have to keep an eye out for his character when I get around to doing a watchthrough of DS9.

Honestly, I really like this movie. I don't like it as much as I might've had I watched it growing up in the '90s and early 2000s, but, it's a solid movie. The jokes are funny, the action is pretty intense, and it has an incredible cast, as I've been raving about for the vast majority of this review. It's not a horror movie, but it is a Halloween movie. There isn't anything in the movie that didn't make sense to me and I liked all of the characters, except for Jay and Ice, the bullies of the movie, who steal Max's shoes for some reason. Yeah, that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Of the three Sanderson Sisters, Sarah, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, is my favourite. Probably because she acts the least evil of the three. Not to mention the least scary of them.

Honestly, I had no idea what to expect when I turned on Disney+ to watch Hocus Pocus for the first time last night. Like I said earlier in this review, I'd heard of the movie, but not a super ton and not until sometime in the last four or five years. I was completely unaware of its existence when I was a kid. Nobody I knew watched it, or if they did, they never talked to me about it. So despite hearing about it as an adult, I had no real preconceived notions going into it. I also didn't watch or read any reviews online before watching it, so I wasn't influenced by anyone else's opinions of it.

Overall this is a great movie. The sequel, which came out last year, is on Disney+ so I'll be watching that tomorrow night probably. But, for now that's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my revisit review of the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, "Strange New Worlds", which is the last Star Trek pilot/premiere episode review that I'm doing since I don't have Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy to watch their premiere episodes. So, until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Star Wars: Union (1999, Dark Horse) Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Wednesday. I haven't done one of these for a while, but I'm back with a comic book review. Today I'm taking a look at the 1999 comic book miniseries, Star Wars: Union, published by Dark Horse Comics. I read it from the original trade paperback collection, which a friend of mine lent me. So, let's get into it.

Written by Michael A. Stackpole, with art by Robert Teranishi, Union was written not only as a bookend to the Bantam era of Star Wars novels, which had ended earlier that year with Starfighters of Adumar, but also as a bridge between the Bantam era and The New Jedi Order series, which Del Rey had begun to publish only a month before the first issue of this miniseries came out. It was also the first of the last three Star Wars projects that Stackpole ever worked on.

In Vision of the Future by Timothy Zahn (1998, Bantam Spectra), Luke Skywalker proposed to Mara Jade, in a rather unusual, but totally Star Wars way, and at the end of the book, which was the final book in the Bantam era within the in universe Expanded Universe chronology, the couple began making plans for the wedding. But, the next time we see them in Vector Prime by R.A. Salvatore (1999, Del Rey), they're married and have been for about six years. Of course, within the chronology both the Junior Jedi Knights series and the Young Jedi Knights series take place between Vision of the Future and Vector Prime. But they had both begun publication in 1995, with the last Junior Jedi Knights book being published in 1997 and the last Young Jedi Knights book being published in 1998, just after Vision of the Future came out. So the marriage between Luke and Mara hadn't been thought of yet. Especially not when both of those series began in 1995. As a result, this comic book series was published to bridge the gap between the two publishing eras, since Junior Jedi Knights and Young Jedi Knights aren't included in the Legends novels timeline anymore, even though they actually were when this comic book series was published and continued to be until 2004 or 2005, for whatever reason.

So this series actually deals with everyone preparing for Luke and Mara's wedding. We see Han, Leia, R2-D2, C-3PO, Chewie, Jacen, Jaina, Anakin, Wedge, Iella, and their kids, Myri and Syal, both of whom would play major roles in the final X-Wing novel, Mercy Kill by Aaron Allston (2012, Del Rey), Corran, Mirax, and their child, Valin, who would play roles in both The New Jedi Order (1999-2003, Del Rey), and Fate of the Jedi (2009-2012, Del Rey), and pretty much every New Republic officer, politician, and ally ever introduced in the novels up to this point. Borsk Fey'lya even makes a cameo appearance, though unlike in the novels, he doesn't say a word in this miniseries. He just appears next to Mon Mothma as she arrives at the venue for the wedding. Talon Karrde, Booster Terrik, all of Rogue Squadron, Winter, everyone from the novels show up. No Pellaeon, Thrawn or Daala though. Naturally there are some bad guys trying to stop the wedding, but it's nothing major. In fact, kinda like Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance's wedding in the DC Universe, where Superman, and some of the Green Lanterns go outside to deal with attacking villains, Wedge, Chewie, Corran, Rogue Squadron, and Kam Solusar (one of Luke's Jedi apprentices from Yavin 4) deal with the majority of the bad guys, while Luke talks down the supposed mastermind of the attack. Basically these guys aren't Thrawn, Isard, Daala, or Moff Disra (the main antagonist in Timothy Zahn's Specter of the Past and Vision of the Future).

There aren't any space battles in this miniseries. The majority of the story takes place on Coruscant, though the bad guys are Imperials and come from a planet called Dolis 3, which is a planet inside the borders of the Imperial Remnant. I guess Stackpole chose not to go too big with this series, and I think it works wonderfully. I'm not familiar with the artist, Robert Teranishi's work, but apparently he did the art for the one shot Qui-Gon Jinn comic that Dark Horse published as part of the marketing campaign for Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace when the movie came out in May of 1999. Honestly, Teranishi does a wonderful job with the art in this book. His style is more photo realistic. So Luke looks like Luke, Han looks like Han, Leia looks like Leia, and Wedge looks like Wedge. Which is something than be difficult to do. Especially because comics in the '90s still generally looked very cartoony, despite the medium having become more mature in the mid to late '80s. 

I actually first became aware of Star Wars: Union in the article done on the book in issue #47 of Star Wars Insider, which just happened to have a live action Mara Jade on the front cover, as the character was going to be appearing in the Star Wars Customizable Card Game from Decipher and the model hired to portray the character, Shannon Baksa, was interviewed alongside Timothy Zahn in that issue. I was never able to get my hands on the single issues. When I got this issue of Star Wars Insider it was probably early 2000, though the issue itself was published in either September or October, 1999 (the cover date is December 1999/January 2000) and the comic started coming out in November, 1999. I wasn't actually getting comics anymore at this point, though the hobby store that my dad still goes to today, still sold comics, and that's where I got a good chunk of my childhood comic book collection, though the Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man comics I had were all bought at the CHEO gift shop. So I just never got my hands on the miniseries. I also wasn't aware of the trade paperback collection either.

Speaking of the trade paperback collection, that's how I read the miniseries today. My buddy, Jonathan, lent it to me over the summer, at the same time he lent me the Dark Forces graphic album trilogy, and the copy he lent me is the first edition. Which is cool, because I think this edition has been out of print for quite sometime as it was republished in 2008 as part of the 30th Anniversary Collection, and was reprinted in the Marvel Epic Collection, The New Republic Vol. 7. 

I really enjoyed this story. Despite being four issues, this miniseries is actually pretty short. I mean, most Star Wars trade paperbacks published by Dark Horse are, but this one was a really fast read. I enjoyed it though. I wasn't expecting it to do the stuff it did, given that this is a Star Wars comic. It was nice to have this story be as low key as it is. I've said it many times in previous posts, but the smaller, more character centric stories are what draws me into fiction the most, no matter what medium I'm experiencing the story in. Though oddly enough it was the expansion of the universe in the novels that got me into Star Wars in the first place. Definitely recommend reading this comic.

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I have a movie review planned for tomorrow, and then my final Star Trek pilot/premiere episode review coming up on Friday. And then we'll see from there. So until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Star Wars: X-Wing: Iron Fist (1998) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I got my flu shot yesterday and my left arm is still a little sore, but otherwise I'm good. Today I'm here to review the sixth book in the X-Wing series, Iron Fist, by Aaron Allston. It's the second book in the Wraith Squadron trilogy, and the second X-Wing novel to have been published in 1998. Out of the 18 Star Wars books that were published that year. As always, there will be spoilers, so if you've never read the book, and care about that sort of thing, you know what to do. Let's get into it.

Iron Fist is one of the funniest books in the X-Wing series up to this point. This and the next book in the series, Solo Command, are my favourite books in the series when it comes to the humour. This book is where Lieutenant Kettch first makes an appearance as an Ewok stuffed toy, who seems to make his rounds because the Wraiths find him in the most ridiculous places. Like, at one point in the book, Wedge discovers him in the cockpit of his TIE Interceptor, and then, later, when Wedge goes to check to see if Kettch is still there, he hears, "Son of the Sith!" and Kettch is tossed out of Face's Interceptor cockpit. We find out where the Lieutenant Kettch toy came from in the next book.

While Wraith Squadron focused alot on Admiral Trigit and the Implacable with Zsinj only popping in from time to time, Iron Fist finally focuses on Zsinj, and he is such a delightfully campy villain. I don't think that's what Dave Wolverton was going for when he created the character for The Courtship of Princess Leia, but Allston did a wonderful job with him. Zsinj is still menacing, but his dynamic with General Melvar is pretty hilarious. Like, when Melvar and Zsinj are talking about Gara Petothel, who is currently a member of Wraith Squadron as Lara Notsil, and Melvar mentions that Trigit had destroyed the real Lara Notsil's hometown of New Oldtown on Aldivy, Zsinj says, "You must be joking about that name" and then when Melvar says New Oldtown again, Zsinj says, "Are you sure he didn't destroy it because of that name?" and Melvar replies, "Since he's dead we'll have trouble asking him". Just so much comedy gold between these two.

We had two Wraith deaths in this novel, compared to the three we had last time. The hardest one for me was Ton Phanan, just because I liked him so much in these first two Wraith Squadron novels. The other death, Castin Donn, was less difficult to process because he was such an unlikeable character. Not just because he argued with Wedge all the time, and told him he was wrong in front of the rest of the unit, but he had a very racist attitude against Piggy and Runt, simply because they were non-human, and because Donn is from Coruscant, which immediately makes him a jerk. 

Beyond all the jokes, snide remarks, and physical comedy that Allston puts in all of his Star Wars novels, not just the five books he wrote for the X-Wing series, with this one, and with Wraith Squadron before it, Allston really shows the mental health side of being part of the Rebel Alliance and New Republic Military. Even for the Imperial Military, Imperial Intelligence, and the warlords in a way through Gara Petothel/Lara Notsil. It shows that even the bravest people have mental health issues. Like Donos's huge mental breakdown after the destruction of Talon Squadron and Shiner's destruction later on in Wraith Squadron. But also Gara/Lara's identity crisis, and Dia Passik's breakdown after she was forced to shoot Castin during a mission as the Hawk-bats pirate group to meet Zsinj on the Iron Fist. Her attempted suicide on the shuttle, which Face and Kell were able to stop, hits harder for me now than it did when I first read this book back in 1998. Mostly because of my friend's suicide back in 2007. In fact the whole mental health stuff that Allston includes in these three Wraith Squadron books really resonates with me now because of me being autistic, and having friends who have various types of mental health issues. Though it didn't so much back in grade 6 because, well, I hadn't had those kinds of experiences yet.

Of the four new squad members we're introduced to, I think Shalla Nelprin and Lara Notsil (Gara Petothel) are my favourites. We don't get a whole lot with Dia Passik in this book, aside from a couple of moments with Face. Though one moment we do get when she's approached by Nawara Ven and Tal'dira, as Rogue Squadron appears in this book a little bit more, and she wants nothing to do with them because she didn't get to grow up on Ryloth, doesn't speak the Twi'lek language, and basically knows nothing about Twi'lek society, for the most part. When I was a kid I thought Nawara was hitting on Dia, which didn't make much sense to me since he was supposed to be with Rhysati Ynr. But going back to it as an adult, no, he was simply trying to make another friend who was a Twi'lek, because there aren't that many in the New Republic military, and only he and Tal'dira in Rogue Squadron. But, Dia didn't want anything to do with them, because they reminded her of the life that the Empire tore away from her when she was sold into Imperial slavery. We never see them interact again in these books, even though Nawara and Tal'dira play significant roles in Solo Command.

Like the other five books in the series that I've read so far, I first read Iron Fist in grade six, back in 1998. It was the last book in the series that Garrett lent me, because Solo Command, Isard's Revenge, and Starfighters of Adumar weren't out yet, though all three would come out in 1999. Garrett didn't get Solo Command until May or June, so there wasn't enough time left in the school year for him to lend it to me when he was finished reading it. And by the time we were in middle school together, I had started getting my own copies, though I wouldn't get the next three books until 2002 or 2003. However I have a bit more of a history with this book in particular than I did the first five. 

In late 1999 when I was in grade seven, I actually got Iron Fist from the Scholastic Book Fair. One of the last ones I ever went to since high schools didn't have them and I didn't go to them in grade eight. So for a few years this was the only X-Wing book I actually owned until I started getting the others from Chapters in the early 2000s, along with the rest of the Bantam era Star Wars books that I got around that time. So I read it alot. I remember sitting in the chair in my bedroom, listening to Enrique Iglesias's first English album, Enrique, as well as Savage Garden's debut album, Savage Garden, while reading this book. 

Like with the rest of the books in this series, Iron Fist got a Legends banner edition sometime between 2014 and 2017. And like with the others, Wookieepedia, and the Random House website, don't list a release date or even year for the Legends banner reprint. It's also getting an Essential Legends Collection trade paperback edition in June of next year. I'm gonna have to do a whole post on the Essential Legends Collection at some point because there are alot of the books included in that line that really don't make much sense as they don't really contribute anything new to the Star Wars Expanded Universe and it's something I'd like to talk about eventually. We'll see.

Overall, this is a great book. It's funny, it's emotional, and Allston does such a great job at bringing in the new characters, bringing back characters that we haven't seen in a minute, like General Melvar, as we haven't seen him since The Courtship of Princess Leia came out in 1994, and keeping all of Wraith Squadron relevant to the story. While Kell and Tyria don't actually have a whole lot to do, they do contribute something to the story. Unlike the members of Rogue Squadron that weren't the focus of the stories in Stackpole's first four Rogue Squadron books. I recommend Iron Fist, along with the rest of the X-Wing series.

That's it for me for today my friends. Now that I've finished the first six books in the X-Wing series, I'm going to take a little bit of a break from the series before I get to Solo Command. The reason being that I got a very interesting book when I went to the pharmacy to get my flu shot yesterday. The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series by Jessica Radloff. It's exactly what the title says it is. A book chronicling the history of The Big Bang Theory (2007-2019) from conception to cancellation, including the genesis of the spin-off prequel series, Young Sheldon (2017-present). I read a couple of excerpts from the book when I got home yesterday, and I am really excited to dive right into the book and to talk about it on here. So, that's going to be the next book I'm gonna read, and the next book review I'm going to do. So you'll have a bit of reprieve from '90s Star Wars novels for a bit before I get to Solo Command. So until then have a great afternoon and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Star Trek: Enterprise Episode 1 & 2 "Broken Bow" (2001) TV Episode Review

Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm going to be talking about the pilot episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, "Broken Bow". There will be spoilers. Let's get into it.

 While I have a fondness for Enterprise because it's the Star Trek series that aired when I was in high school, it's not my favourite Star Trek show. In fact, as I mentioned in the 20th anniversary post I did on the show two years ago, Enterprise was the Star Trek show that wasn't an absolute must watch for me every week. Because it aired twice a week here in Canada, once on CityTV and once on Space Channel, I frequently pre-empted it in favour of That '70s Show and the last few seasons of Friends. I also preferred reruns of DS9 and Voyager, plus my VHS tapes of TNG episodes over Enterprise. It's also the Star Trek series that I've revisited the least over the years, having only seen it once through, and very few episodes more than once since they originally aired. 

"Broken Bow" feels rushed as an introductory episode despite its 87 minute runtime. It does a decent enough job at introducing the new crew and the new Enterprise, it didn't do anything to further the characters beyond Captain Archer and possibly T'Pol. Which is fine, but, since TNG started in 1987, Star Trek had been marketed as a series with an ensemble cast, where you didn't really have a singular main character. But the early 2000s action shows were more about the singular protagonist and the singular antagonist or foil character, and less about the larger ensemble casts that populated TV shows in the '90s. Despite its name, Smallville was very much Clark's show, Andromeda was very much Kevin Sorbo's show, therefore it was Dylan's show, and The O.C. was very much Ryan's show despite the more ensemble nature of each show.. Sure, all those shows had supporting characters surrounding the main protagonist of each show, but most of the time that's all they were and very rarely were they handled in a way in terms of the writing that conveyed to the audience that they're ensemble shows.

One of my favourite parts of this episode is near the beginning when the Vulcans, led by Ambassador Soval (played by Gary Graham), try to convince Starfleet Command to postpone the launch of Enterprise until the situation with Klaang has been resolved, and after some insistence from Archer, Admiral Forrest (played by Vaughn Armstrong) shuts Soval down and says, "We've been waiting nearly a century, Ambassador. This seems as good a time as any to get started", with a look on his face that is almost pleasure in finally telling the Vulcan Ambassador where he can shove his dismissal of Humanity as a whole. In the last twenty-two years Vulcans have been portrayed as having the biggest superiority complex in the entire galaxy, and it's really weird, since, yes, we kind of had that with Spock in TOS and the Vulcan Baseball team in the DS9 episode, "Take Me Out to the Holosuite", but, it's still weird to see the entire species have that complex. 

Another thing I liked was the way Archer and T'Pol's working relationship developed over the course of the episode. It does feel a bit rushed compared to Sisko and Kira's working relationship on DS9, but that developed over the course of the first few seasons of the show, whereas here, they needed Archer and T'Pol to be different from Sisko and Kira. Mostly so the show wouldn't feel like a retread of what was already done on DS9 and on TOS 35 years earlier (from the time Enterprise premiered). 

Jonathan Archer, played by Scott Bakula, is an interesting character, and he is one of my favourite ones in all of Star Trek. I've never seen Quantum Leap, so I had no idea who Bakula was until I watched this episode for the first time, back in 2001, but I liked him instantly. Archer, and the rest of the Enterprise crew, minus Phlox and T'Pol, all feel like the most Human of all of the Human characters we've had on Star Trek up to that point, with the exception of the DS9 characters. Archer, Trip, Malcolm, Travis, and Hoshi have fears, prejudices, dreams, goals, and desires that make them all feel more identifiable to the audience than the perfect Humans we'd been getting in the 24th Century shows. They also feel more like 21st Century people. 

The 2000s was an interesting time for Star Trek. By the time Enterprise premiered on September 26th, 2001, mainstream audiences had moved on from Star Trek. The movies weren't doing nearly as well at the box office as the TOS movies had been doing in the '80s and early '90s, merchandise wasn't as available in retail stores as it had been only ten years earlier, and people just weren't watching the shows anymore. And they really hadn't been since TNG ended in 1994, as shown by the ratings of both DS9 and Voyager, which had continued to decline throughout their respective runs. "Broken Bow" garnered 12.54 million views the night it premiered, but every week after that the ratings dropped until by the end of the season, the ratings were down between 4 and 5 million views per episode. You can't even blame streaming for that, because streaming didn't even exist yet in the early to mid-2000s when Enterprise was on the air.

I remember watching "Broken Bow" the night it premiered. It was on CityTV, and it was the first Star Trek premiere episode that I watched by myself. My parents and siblings watched it, but I watched it on the TV in my bedroom, which I'd just gotten four months earlier. However, the opening of the episode confused me at first because it opened on a model spaceship with a kid and his dad working on it. I honestly thought I had the wrong channel until they started talking about warp speed and Vulcans, and a Klingon showed up in the very next scene. And, what threw me off even more is the opening credits not only just said Enterprise, and not Star Trek: Enterprise (they changed that for the beginning of the third season), but the theme music was "Where My Heart Will Take Me" by Russell Watson, which I knew as "Faith of the Heart" by Rod Stewart, which came out in 1998, not an orchestral piece like Star Trek had always had. I understood what UPN was trying to do with this, because, like I said, Star Trek was no longer popular as it had been ten years earlier, and the most popular shows of the time had or would have pop songs as their opening themes. Sitcoms had always had iconic theme songs (Full House, Cheers, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Friends all come to mind), but previous Star Trek shows, and shows like Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman all had orchestral opening themes. 

The big thing I really don't like about the episode is how Hoshi, played by Linda Park, was portrayed while they were on Rigel X. She's a trained Starfleet officer, so why was she being treated like a hinderance by Archer and the crew? And why wasn't she carrying a weapon? I get that in this time period Starfleet had only been around for a short period of time, but I also know that by this point in time, women were treated way more equally than they were being treated when this episode originally aired. I suspect it has something to do with Rick Berman being one of the writers of this episode, with Brannon Braga being the other. From what the cast of Enterprise has said in the last few years, these guys didn't treat anyone very well on set, especially the women. Which was corroborated by the casts of both DS9 and Voyager, who all had similar stories. Not so much from Braga, but Berman was who these casts pointed out in recent years. 

Overall, this is an okay episode. I think I liked it alot better when it originally aired than I did watching it now. Enterprise got pretty good as the show went on, but, again, it's not my favourite Star Trek show, and I often skipped it in favour of That '70s Show and Friends. Especially in later seasons. It's not a bad show by any means, it just got too compromised by studio and network interference, and behind the scenes issues so that by the time Manny Coto took over as showrunner in what ended up being the show's final season, the damage had been done. As I've said many times, even if UPN hadn't canceled Enterprise when it did, The CW, which was created by the merger of UPN and The WB, would've canceled it during or after the fifth season simply because they weren't interested in doing Sci-Fi shows, and because the audience for Star Trek just wasn't there anymore. I do like the cast though, and I respect them for working under difficult circumstances.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today and for this week. I'll be back next week for more posts and reviews. So until then have a great rest of the weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Marvel's Star Trek Overview Part 8: One-Shots (1996-1998)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back with the finale of my Marvel Comics Star Trek overview series. Today we're wrapping things up with the seven one-shot issues that were published between 1996 and 1998. I haven't read any of these, so I'm not going to have much to say about them. I do want to be as complete as possible in these overview posts, so I'm including them. Let's get into it.

The first of these one-shots was the comic book adaptation of Star Trek: First Contact. This was the last comic book adaptation of a Star Trek movie until IDW published the comic book adaptation of The Wrath of Khan in 2009 and the last comic book adaptation of a new Star Trek movie until IDW published a comic book adaptation of the 2009 Star Trek movie. Insurrection and Nemesis never got comic book adaptations because by the time the marketing campaign for Insurrection started, Marvel had already given up the Star Trek comic book license and WildStorm wouldn't acquire it until 2000, and by the time Nemesis came out, WildStorm had already lost the license, and no other comic book company picked it up until IDW acquired it in 2007.  Like I said, I've never read these one shots so I have no idea how good of an adaptation this is or anything like that. I haven't even seen any artwork from it, besides the front cover.

Next is the Star Trek/X-Men crossover one-shot that has Kirk and his crew teaming up with the X-Men somehow. I don't know if it's time travel or dimension hopping or anything like that. I just know that the crew of the Enterprise, under the command of James T. Kirk, teams up with the X-Men. I found out about this issue because there's an ad for it in the back of Star Trek: Voyager #2. 

Next is Star Trek: Mirror Mirror: Fragile Glass. This is basically a sequel to the season 2 TOS episode, "Mirror, Mirror". Memory Alpha doesn't give any kind of plot synopsis for this issue, so I'm assuming that it tells what happened in the Mirror Universe after the episode, but before we saw the Mirror Universe again in the season 2 DS9 episode, "Crossover", which actually aired about two and a half years before this issue came out. Having not read the issue, I have no idea if the writer of this issue, Tom DeFalco, was influenced by the DS9 episodes or not, as the first three episodes of the DS9 Mirror Universe arc had aired by the time this issue had come out, but the comics don't tend to be heavily influenced by what the TV shows are doing, so I have no idea.

Star Trek: Operation Assimilation focuses on the Romulans who encountered the Borg during the Collective's initial incursion into the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, which was hinted at in the season 1 finale of TNG, prior to the Borg officially being created for season 2. According to Memory Alpha, none of our main characters from any of the TV shows appear in this issue. Which is interesting, considering Star Trek doesn't tend to do a whole lot with brand new, created for the comics or novels, characters without a TV show/movie character showing up at least once in a story. That's usually a Star Wars thing.

Next up is the Telepathy War one-shot that wrapped up the arc that had been running through the ongoing monthly series. This is the issue where the TNG crew from Star Trek Unlimited meet with the DS9 crew, and the cast from Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, with Spock representing TOS, even though the TOS portion of Unlimited didn't play a part in the storyline. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation/X-Men: Second Contact is an interesting comic. While I've never read it, I've read its novel sequel, Planet X, which was published the same month as this issue. Basically, on its way back to the 24th Century, after First Contact, the Enterprise-E is intercepted by Kang the Conqueror and sent to the 20th Century, where Picard and the crew encounter the X-Men. Sir Patrick Stewart had been cast as Charles Xavier for the first X-Men movie, which came out in 2000, so the novel has a scene in the holodeck where Picard, who was also played by Sir Patrick, meets Xavier and notes a similarity between himself and the Professor. I'll talk about that more when I review the novel at a later time. 

 Finally, we have Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Enemy of My Enemy, which features Riker. According to Memory Alpha, Riker goes undercover with the Maquis, shortly after the events of First Contact, and teams up with Ro Laren to get some information on the Genesis Device, which is stolen by the Klingons, tying into Star Trek III. 

This was one of the last Star Trek comics to come out, along with the final issues of Untold Voyages and Voyager - Splashdown, before Marvel lost the license. As mentioned, people believe that these comics ended up not selling very well because too many series were coming out, which killed the market. However, I think the Marvel Comics Star Trek comic book line didn't sell very well because by 1996, Star Trek's popularity with general audiences had dropped significantly, only appealing to the fans, though obviously First Contact did extremely well at the box office. TV wise and merchandise wise, Star Trek just wasn't as popular as it had been only five years earlier when there was only two live action TV shows, an animated series, and five movies, with a sixth on the way. Unlike hardcore fans who stay involved with their favourite franchises their whole lives, general audiences can't be expected to do the same. Plus, at the time, Marvel wasn't a very well known publisher outside of the fanbase, as they hadn't had a solid live action theatrical feature film success yet. Though Blade would come out just as the company's Star Trek comic book line was coming to an end. 

After Marvel lost the license in 1998, there were no Star Trek comics until WildStorm started publishing their series based on TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager in 2000. However, that only lasted a year and once WildStorm lost the license in 2001, just as Enterprise was starting, which is why that series had no comic book adaptation at the time of the show's original run, Star Trek would be completely absent from the comic book landscape until IDW Publishing picked up the license in 2007. Then again, Star Trek was almost completely absent from 2005, when Enterprise was canceled, and 2009, when the first movie directed by J.J. Abrams came out, so it makes sense that no comic books would be published for the franchise. 

The '80s and '90s were a golden age for Star Trek in comic books, between the series, one-shots, and graphic novels being published by DC Comics, and the series and one-shots being published by Marvel. The second Marvel era is extremely underrated. While I haven't read nearly as many issues from that era as I might like, the ones I have read, which are the Voyager and Early Voyages issues that I have, are really good. Marvel in general just wasn't doing very well during this period, and so the Star Trek comics never got the proper attention from the company, or the audience, that they deserved. I even feel that the original '80s run that Marvel did between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan isn't talked about very much. We wouldn't see this level of competence for a Star Trek comic again until IDW took over in 2007. And IDW still holds the license today, though I don't know how well they sell, because I'm not super steeped in the comic book fan community, or the Star Trek fan community to know which IDW series is well regarded, or not well regarded, and which one has grabbed people's attention outside of the main Trek fanbase. I just know there are some I like, and others I don't.

That my friends is it for this comic book overview series. I don't know if I'll do this with any other Star Trek comic book run. I probably won't because I haven't read any of the WildStorm comics or most of the IDW runs, aside from a few issues here and there of more recent stuff, and the original Gold Key series is a single post overview, since it's just the one series they published, with no annuals or one-shots or anything like that. But, maybe I'll do this with Star Wars because that franchise has a long history with comic books, and I have alot of interest in reading the Dark Horse era of the comics. So we'll see. For now, I'll be back tomorrow or Saturday for my review of the pilot episode of Enterprise, "Broken Bow". So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Star Wars: X-Wing: Wraith Squadron (1998) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty good. I'm back with yet another book review. This week I'll be reviewing the fifth book in the Star Wars: X-Wing series, Wraith Squadron by the late Aaron Allston. Like with my other Star Wars book reviews there will be spoilers in this review. So let's get into it.

While Stackpole's Rogue Squadron novels feel bigger in terms of how high the stakes are, Aaron Allston's Wraith Squadron novels are smaller in scale. I love the Rogues however, I could never really connect to someone like Corran Horn or Mirax Terrik. But, with the Wraiths, I immediately connected to them. Especially to Kell, Face, Phanan and Tyria. Wraith Squadron consists of misfits, outcasts, and people who actually struggle and have psychological problems. Of course, in high school the Wraiths reminded me of my friends and I. Though most of the time I felt like Wedge, dealing with the insane people. 

Allston has a great sense of humour that is easy to spot throughout this book. For example, at the beginning of the book, when Wedge and Wes are interviewing candidates to join the new squadron, unnamed at this point, Wes informs Wedge that the first candidate is an Ewok, his name is Kettch, and his catchphrase is "Yub yub Commander". At first, Wedge is absolutely stunned, and actually believes Janson, and then Janson says that he's actually just kidding. But then "Yub yub Commander" or some variation of that is used as the squadron's catchphrase throughout the rest of the Wraith books kinda like how "Beep beep Richie" or just "Beep beep" was in Stephen King's It. Later on, Janson tells Wedge that the next candidate is a Gamorrean. Of course, Wedge doesn't believe him until Piggy walks into Wedge's office. 

Unlike with Stackpole's books, Allston does a much better job of utilizing the ensemble cast. We get to know every member of Wraith Squadron and everyone is given something to do or an arc to go through. For example, just prior to joining the Wraiths, Myn Donos was the leader of Talon Squadron. Unfortunately, the entire unit was wiped out by the Star Destroyer, Implacable, commanded by Admiral Apwar Trigit, who is under the employ of Warlord Zsinj, leaving Donos, and his Astromech Droid, Shiner, the only surviving members of the squadron. Donos has to work through the pain of watching his squadmates perish due to an Imperial ambush. Tyria has to deal with guilt stemming from accepting a bribe from a corrupt New Republic colonel, as well as dealing with her extremely weak connection to the Force. And the rest of the Wraiths all have to deal with similar issues of feeling unwanted, useless, or helping the Imperials when they were younger. 

While we don't see a whole lot of Zsinj in this book, Trigit being the main villain of the book, Zsinj will have a bigger role to play in the next two books, as we get closer to connecting the Wraith books with The Courtship of Princess Leia, written by Dave Wolverton, which had been published only four years earlier at the time Wraith Squadron was published. Trigit is an okay villain, but he's not as good as Isard was, and he isn't as fun as Zsinj is in these books. In fact, for being the focus antagonist for this book, Trigit is pretty minor. 

We're also introduced to Gara Petothel, an Imperial spy who joins up with Trigit after her intel was used to destroy Talon Squadron. Gara also becomes a major character in the next two X-Wing books, under the name, Lara Notsil. She's a fine character here, but, she doesn't have as much to do in this book as she does in later ones. 

In terms of locations, there are tons of star systems that we visit in this book. None of them are ever mentioned again, but, we do revisit three locations from the Rogue books. The first is Folor Base, where Wraith Squadron is assembled. It was the base where Rogue Squadron was reformed in Rogue Squadron. The second was Talasea, which was the base the Rogues used in Rogue Squadron until the Imperials showed up and killed Lujayne Forge. The third was Borleias, which was the location of the major battle at the end of Rogue Squadron, and played a major role in both Wedge's Gamble and The Krytos Trap. 

My favourite scene in the book is probably when the Wraiths give Donos some tough love following Shiner's destruction during the battle where Jesmin Ackbar, the niece of Admiral  "it's a trap!" Ackbar, was killed. They do it by making him confront his recent behaviour in a simulation run of Talon Squadron's destruction in the middle of the night. It shows that the Wraiths have all become friends and would do anything to help each other out of a bad situation. Which is something we didn't get to see with the Rogues. 

Oh, and I love Wraith Squadron's Protocol Droid, Squeaky. He isn't as prissy as Threepio, and not as annoying as Emtrey was. He's been set free following his escape from Leia's ship in A New Hope, so he's no longer constrained by his master/servant programming that other Droids have. So he insults the Wraiths, particularly Kell, who ends up pissing off Squeaky upon their first meeting when Squeaky was working as a waiter at the Tapcafe, DownTime. Which is a hilarious scene, and makes it even funnier when Wedge hires Squeaky to be the squadron's quartermaster. Especially because Kell was a mechanic on Sluis Van prior to joining the New Republic Military, so he helped the squadron's chief mechanic, Cubber Dane, to work on the X-Wings, which meant he had to work with Squeaky alot. 

I love this book. While the next book, Iron Fist, is my favourite book in the series, Wraith Squadron is a great introduction to the Wraiths and I could spend all day writing about it and the characters. But, I'll spare you my rambling. This time. Next time, you might not be so lucky.

 I first read Wraith Squadron when Garrett lent me the first six books in the X-Wing series, all the way back in late 1998 and early 1999. I loved it instantly, and eventually got my own copy, along with the rest of the series. Like with the rest of the series, Wraith Squadron got a Legends Banner paperback edition sometime between 2014 and 2017, though there's no date listed anywhere on Wookieepedia or the Random House website. It's also going to be getting an Essential Legends Collection trade paperback edition in February, 2024, but the cover hasn't been revealed yet. 

Overall, Wraith Squadron is a great book. I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a lighter toned Legends novel to read, while still getting all the emotional beats you come to expect from Star Wars. Plus, as I said, it starts connecting the series to The Courtship of Princess Leia. Definitely a must read.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back soon with the final installment of my Marvel Star Trek comic book overview series, as well as my review of the pilot episode of Star Trek: Enterprise "Broken Bow", which will be an interesting review. So until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Goosebumps Episodes 1-5 (2023) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? Happy Friday the 13th! Today I'm here to talk about the first five episodes of the new Goosebumps Disney+ series. There either will be very minor spoilers or no spoilers at all in this review since this is a brand new show. So let's get into it.

As I talked about in my review of the pilot episode of the Fox Kids Goosebumps TV show, I wasn't into Goosebumps as much as other people were at the time. The original book series began when I was only five years old, so I wasn't exactly the right age to be reading the books, and when the original TV show started in 1995, I wasn't allowed to watch it being that I had siblings who, when the show started, were the age I was when the books started being published. And while I've read a few of the original books and enjoyed them, I haven't read any of them in about 20 years, so I don't have as much attachment to the franchise as alot of other people do. Which is maybe why I was able to enjoy these first five episodes because they are so different from anything that Goosebumps has done before.

Like most modern TV shows, this show is serialized, which is not how Goosebumps has ever been. The books have always been mostly standalone stories told in a more anthology styled way, with the exception of the books, like The Haunted Mask, that had their own mini-series within the larger series. The Fox Kids TV show was like that too. With this show though, the first three are standalone in that they each focus on an individual character, with the other characters either not appearing at all or making only brief cameos. Then for the next two episodes, everyone's stories come together for a more traditional serialized approach. 

Something else about this show is that it's aged up from the typical 8 to 12 year old age group that the franchise has been aimed at since the beginning back in 1992. Which means that the people making it didn't intend to make it for kids. They intended to make it for the people who grew up with the franchise in the past. Which is nice because the scary stuff can be a bit scarier, and they can include mentions of drugs, sex, and alcohol, which obviously couldn't be in the previous versions. And that includes the 2015 movie and its sequel. From what I've heard of it The CW Nancy Drew series did something very similar, but, it being The CW they maybe took it a little too far in that more adult side of things. But I'm not here to talk about Nancy Drew. What I'm trying to say is whenever a show or movie or book series from when we were children gets rebooted or brought back, it's not going to appeal to modern audiences if it stays in that realm of what it was when we were children. 

One of the complaints I've heard about the Hulu Hardy Boys show is that it stayed too close to what the original books were, and Joe and Biff were aged down too much to appeal to modern day children, when they easily could've done what the syndicated TV show did in the '90s, and what the The Hardy Boys Casefiles did in the '80s and '90s, and kept Frank and Joe at the traditional, revised text, ages of 18 (Frank) and 17 (Joe), but had them tackling more adult cases. Which didn't happen this time around. 

Another example of this is Power Rangers. Children have been the target audience for the franchise for the last thirty years. While some seasons like Time Force, SPD, and RPM were slightly more mature than most other seasons of the show, it's mostly stayed targeted at children. And while that was fine in the '90s, and even in the 2000s, kids today aren't necessarily interested in Power Rangers as kids in the '90s and 2000s were. And yet, when they tried to age it up with the 2017 movie, adults, who hadn't already grown up with the franchise, and teenagers, even if they had grown up with it, just weren't interested, because of Power Rangers's reputation of being a children's show. Which is why I'm glad that Once & Always, while containing the cheesiness and tropes of the original show, aged itself up and didn't act like the original Rangers hadn't gotten older in the last thirty years, and they addressed Thuy Trang's death by having Robo Rita kill her character, Trini, at the beginning of the special. 

It's because of this dilemma that I'm glad that Scholastic and Sony made this new Goosebumps TV show for an older audience. Because, whether it's my generation, or the next generations after mine, if you're between the ages of 23 and 43, you remember reading Goosebumps, or seeing the Fox Kids TV show, at some point during your childhood. Even if you never read all of them or didn't keep up with the franchise after a certain age. And because this show was written competently, and acted competently, it's alot better than I actually expected it to be, and I ended up loving these first five episodes.

The cast is spectacular. I'm only familiar with four members of the cast of this show, aside from Justin Long. Isa Briones, who played various Soong type Androids, and the cloned daughter of a Doctor Soong, in the first two seasons of Star Trek: Picard, Rob Huebel, who played the sketchy 1980s salesman on The Goldbergs, Lexa Doig, who played the Avatar of the Andromeda on Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda and Talia al Ghul on Arrow, and Rachel Harris, who played Kes's mom on Star Trek: Voyager in the third season episode, "Before and After". Everyone else are actors I'm not familiar with. Of course, I haven't seen Justin Long in anything major or mainstream since He's Just Not That Into You came out back in 2009, so it was really great to see him again because, even though I've only ever seen him in a few movies, he was part of my late high school and college experience through the "Get a Mac" commercials ("I'm a Mac" and "I'm a PC") that Apple put out between 2006 and 2009.

The characters were pretty good. Though the teenage characters are your typical angsty TV teenagers, played by people in their 20s. Because we're back to that old chestnut once again. Then again I've seen high schoolers in my neighbourhood who look older than they actually are, so I guess it makes sense, but it's still weird. We have Isiah, the jock/quarterback, Margot, his geeky next door neighbour, James, his gay best friend, Lucas, the daredevil, and Isabella, the outcast.

I would also like to highlight episode 2, "The Haunted Mask". Mainly because the Mask, looked a thousand times creepier when Isabella put it on than it did when Carly Beth put it on in the original TV episode. Plus a few things that I said might happen if that book were to be adapted into a TV show episode today, happened. Go figure. 

Overall this was a pretty good start to the show. It's not the best show ever made, but I ended up enjoying more than I thought I would given that I didn't keep up with Goosebumps after the age of 13. If you're into scary stuff, and enjoyed Goosebumps when you were a kid, but didn't keep up with it beyond that, I recommend watching this version. I was actually on the edge of my seat for most of the show, which is good, because I wasn't able to predict what would happen next. Except for "The Haunted Mask" of course, but, c'mon, I've seen the original TV version, AND I reviewed it earlier this week. So it wasn't hard to figure it out. 

Alright my friends, that's it for me for this week. I'll be back next week with not as many posts as I made this week. I just had alot to talk about with this new Goosebumps show starting to come out, and unexpectedly finishing The Bacta War when I finished it. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Star Trek: Voyager Episode 1 & 2, "Caretaker" (1995) TV Episode Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Thursday. I'm back with my review of the series premiere of Star Trek: Voyager, "Caretaker", which originally aired on Monday, January 16th, 1995. There will be spoilers, as there have been in all of my Star Trek pilot episode reviews, so that's your warning. Let's get into it.

While "Caretaker" is nowhere near as strong as "Emissary" as the series premiere of a '90s Star Trek TV show, it's still really good. Of course, by the time this episode was produced, the people working on it were Star Trek veterans, with the majority of them having worked in the franchise since the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So they knew how a series premiere should be. However, Voyager was the first live action Star Trek series on network television since TOS went off the air in 1969, and the first series in the franchise to be on network television since TAS went off the air in 1974. Add on top of that, the fact that it was launching a brand new network, and the end result was the best it could be under the circumstances.

After a Maquis ship, under the command of former Starfleet officer, Chakotay (played by Robert Beltran), disappears in the Badlands, Starfleet Command sends the new U.S.S. Voyager (NCC-74656), under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway (played by Kate Mulgrew) to investigate. However, the ship is flung into the Delta Quadrant, 70,000 light-years from Federation space by a being known as the Caretaker (played by Basil Langton). With most of her bridge crew killed and being forced to destroy the Caretaker's Array following the death of the Caretaker, Janeway invites Chakotay and the other Maquis to join her crew for the long journey home. 

Besides Janeway and Chakotay, the crew consists of Lieutenant Tom Paris (played by Robert Duncan McNeill), the Vulcan Lieutenant Tuvok (played by Tim Russ), Ensign Harry Kim (played by Garrett Wang), the half-Human half Klingon Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres (played by Roxann Dawson), a Talaxian named Neelix (played by Ethan Phillips), the Doctor (Emergency Medical Hologram played by Robert Picardo), and an Ocampan named Kes (played by Jennifer Lien). The Voyager cast is one of my favourite Star Trek casts next to TNG, SNW, and DS9. While the DS9 and SNW crews are some of the most well developed crews in the entire franchise, Voyager's crew feels more like a family rather than a crew, because of how far from Starfleet Command they were. Janeway could loosen things up in terms of daily procedure and the day to day operation of the ship because they were the only crew around being that they couldn't just go to a Starbase for crew transfers like a starship normally does. 

Voyager is the series that I probably have the most nostalgia and fondness for next to TNG. I was eight years old when this episode premiered. We didn't have cable at the time, so Nana and Grandpa taped it off the TV for us, and I think Mom and Dad watched it first to make sure it would be okay for my siblings and I to watch, since I was eight years old, my sister wasn't quite five yet, and my brother wasn't quite four yet. I remember all five of us sitting in the upstairs common area, that my brother, sister, and I used for our playroom, with my siblings and I on the floor in front of the TV, and my parents on the couch they'd put up there for us, watching the premiere on VHS. And then we'd be allowed to watch an episode occasionally after Nana had taped it for us, and Mom and Dad watched it first. But it wasn't until 1998 when I was 11, my sister was 8, and my brother was 7 that we started watching it together on a weekly basis. Season 6 and season 7 are the ones I remember the most. And then in the 2000s, when I was in high school and the series had ended, it remained in reruns for an extremely long time, so I would watch it every day after school, loving the characters even more. 

Voyager is also the Star Trek series that was the most accessible. Despite it's very obvious flaws due to it being run by people who weren't the best individuals, i.e. Rick Berman, because it was led by a female captain, women seemed to enjoy it the best. I had a friend in high school who was not into Star Trek at all, but she loved Voyager. In fact, we'd sit on the phone with each other and watch it together after school when it was on in reruns, as the reruns were on a channel I had on the rabbit ears on the TV in my bedroom. And even a few years ago when I showed my friend, Katie, both this episode, and the season six episode, "Fair Haven", she was open to watching more of the show, despite her not liking Star Trek in general.

And I think that not only has to do with there being a female captain, but, the show, despite being the second live action show to be spun-off of The Next Generation, doesn't rely on people having seen the previous shows before watching this one to understand what's going on. Even the whole concept of the Maquis is explained in the opening crawl at the beginning of this episode, as well as the entire opening sequence with Tuvok, Chakotay, and B'Elanna on the Maquis ship before we ever see Voyager or meet Captain Janeway.

This episode does feel a bit wonky at times just because the POV shifts throughout the episode. As I mentioned, it opens with Chakotay, but then shifts to Tom Paris, and we get his POV until Voyager gets transported to the Delta Quadrant, and then it splits between Janeway and Harry and B'Elanna, as Harry and B'Elanna are on the Ocampan homeworld. And then we just stick with that the rest of the episode.

Because of this constant shift in POV, it does slow the episode down a bit, just because we're being introduced to Neelix, Kes, the Doctor, the Ocampans, the Caretaker himself, and the Kazon-Ogla, led by Maje Jabin. Personally, I think the Kazon aren't great villains. They aren't scary like the Vidiians, they aren't tough like the Hirogen or the Borg, and they aren't as re-usable as the Malon, who also aren't great either. Sure they have a bit more of an advantage against Voyager once Seska joins them later in the season, but then we don't see Seska and the Kazon again until the second season, so it kind of takes the bite out of them a little bit.

I also like that Chakotay immediately accepted Janeway as the captain once the Maquis ship was destroyed and his crew joined with the surviving members of Voyager's crew. That moment where Janeway announces she's going to destroy the Array, B'Elanna angrily asks, "Who is she to be making this decision for all of us?" and Chakotay calmly replies, "She's the captain.", shows that, despite leaving Starfleet to fight for his people against the Cardassians, Chakotay still respects Starfleet and everything it stands for. Even when he discovered that Tuvok was a Federation operative, assigned to infiltrate his crew, Chakotay understood that Tuvok was simply doing his duty as a Starfleet officer. 

It also feels weird that Voyager had a first officer, a chief engineer, a pilot, and a chief medical officer before Chakotay, B'Elanna, Tom, and the Doctor filled those roles. Just because we don't get very much time with them before they're all killed due to damage caused by the Caretaker's displacement wave grabbing the ship. In fact, when Janeway orders Tom to take the helm before she and Tuvok beam over to the Caretaker's Array, I thought, "now Tom Paris is where he belongs on the ship". He flies the ship, just like Ortegas does, so to see Tom do anything else is weird to me.

The last thing I want to mention is Quark's cameo appearance in this episode. I love Quark, he's one of my favourite characters from DS9, but, unlike Picard's appearance in "Emissary", which was rich and connected to Sisko's backstory, Quark's appearance in this episode was pointless. The character actually felt off compared to how he is portrayed on DS9. Especially around this point in DS9's run. "Caretaker" aired midway through DS9's third season, premiering the day after "Past Tense Part II" aired, so Quark had grown quite a bit in the two and a half seasons the show had been on for. The way Quark is portrayed in this episode made him feel like he'd regressed to the way he was in the first season. It also felt like a really bad way to introduce Harry Kim, because it makes him look like a complete idiot. I mean, sure, he just graduated from Starfleet Academy, and Voyager was his first assignment post-graduation, but even the greenest cadet is trained well enough to not say "we were warned about Ferengi at the Academy" to a Ferengi. It was weird.

Overall, this was a great start to a series that I feel is very underrated. Between being on a brand new network that ended up failing and merging with The WB, another failed network, to form The CW only ten years after it's creation, and the fact that Star Trek as a whole just wasn't as popular as it had been during TNG's original run, Voyager had the potential to grab people's attention and be successful, and it just wasn't. Unlike DS9, Voyager felt safe, because Rick Berman was, well, he was Rick Berman and that's all I'm going to say about that. If you know about this show's production history, you know why I dislike Rick Berman.

And that my friends is it for me for today. I'll be back either tomorrow or Saturday with my review of the first five episodes of Goosebumps. When I do the review, will depend on how long episodes are and how long it takes me to watch all five that are coming out tomorrow. So until then, have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.