Classic and new Christmas specials and longer videos. See what I add all year and see if one of your favorites is on the list.
Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter (or possibly multiple chapters for this one) of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.
And we just finished reading the previous book. I wasn’t expecting it take almost a year to finish. That was a very long book and so is the next one in the series. I plan to return to it someday, but not for a while. It’s time to break out a new, much shorter book. And since we’re in licenced mode there are really only three short but still decent length series I can go with.
I do have the novelisations of the first two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, but they’re the junior novelizations because I didn’t know there was a full-sized one for both movies. You know, the good ones from the 1990s. I also have a novelisation of the game Ninja Gaiden, though I don’t know how accurate it is because I never finished the game. Maybe someday we’ll get to those, but no ninjas this round. Instead, we’re talking Time Lords.
I only have handful of Doctor Who episode novelisations. Having reviewed the lone standalone novel I own in a previous Chapter By Chapter, The Time Travellers, it’s time to go through the novelisations, but which episode should I chose? Most of mine are the Target produced books, not the US store but the UK book publisher. I do have one that was made by an American publisher as Tom Baker’s Doctor was gaining popularity in the US. That might be fun and it’s an episode I have yet to check out. Or I could go chronologically with the next episode after the standalone. Target didn’t release them in that order, so I could go the numbered order, or whatever book I’m in the mood for like I do with the Star Trek novels, or stay chronological like I do with the Star Wars novels. (Star Trek and chronology is something hard to pin down. Stardates are BS.) So I wasn’t really sure what to do next.
And then the official Classic YouTube channel gave me the answer. As if they knew what I was planning they dropped a combined arc that is the next book chronologically in my collection, which I was kind of hoping they would. I could have pointed to Tubi, but that would only work for my US readers as the UK readers would have to go to BBC’s I-Player and I don’t know what other countries needed to be pointed to. I’m not even sure the YouTube one works in multiple countries due to rights issues. Still, they dropped it and I can use it. The twenty-fifth book in the Chapter By Chapter review series is therefore….
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I’m sparing you a very terrible joke about hands. Two, actually.
The Solution #7
Malibu Comics/Ultraverse (March, 1994)
“Payback” part 2
WRITER: James D. Hudnall
PENCILER: John Statema
INKER: Tom Florimonte
COLORING: Tim Divar & Violent Hues
LETTERER: Tim Eldred
EDITOR: Hank Kanalz
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Plus Kurtzman’s Trek is still going on.
Over at The Clutter Reports this week we have our hopefully final look at Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image with the overall book report. Tomorrow you’ll see the next book in the Chapter By Chapter review series…though in a way I’ve already shown it to you. You’ll see what I mean tomorrow night…or whenever it shows up in your time zone. This last book has ruined time calculation for me.
This week we also start the CBS Transformers production notes between the first and second attempt. I forgot I had that file available, not to mention how long it is. Might be a good two or three articles out of it before we get to the second attempt. Plus the usual comic reviews and whatever else comes along. Welcome to all the new readers I’ve picked up recently. Sadly I make no money from this (my host gets all the ad revenue) and that’s about to become a problem, but it’s nice to know people are interested in what I have to say. Now if I can only get a proper work schedule going I might be able to figure out how to make money from this.
At any rate, have a great week, everyone!
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“The Rescue” is a story arc from season two of the original Doctor Who, the third serial in the season. It takes place immediately after “The Dalek Invasion Of Earth”, where Susan left the TARDIS after having found love, and I’m thinking the Doctor wanted to spare her from the dangerous life his travels had become. The two episodes, “The Powerful Enemy” and “Desperate Measures”, would introduce new Companion Vicki, continuing the formula of the muscle (Ian), the heart (Barbara), the old scientist (the Doctor), and the teen girl that was settled upon in the production notes for the series. I may be getting the names wrong as it’s been awhile since I went over them. Also, Vicki eventually left for the same reason. Different guy, though. Carole Ann Ford left the show to further her career. This would open a spot for Maureen O’Brien to take her spot in the crew, but not in our hearts. She did make her own spot there, and got along well enough with the Doctor that she was there when Ian and Barbara left to finally go home.
The TARDIS has arrived on Dido, where the tea’s gone cold and two human survivors are wondering why they got out of bed at all. Look, we knew had to come somewhere. I’m just ending our misery early. The Doctor has been here before, but he always knew the people as friendly. That’s how what Vicki and Bennet are seeing, with the mysterious Koquillion claiming he’s protecting them from his people. Something strange is going on, and it won’t wait for the rescue ship supposedly coming for them. What’s really going on? The Doctor, Ian, and Barbara are going to find out no matter what Vicki and Bennet tell them.
As to why I’m posting this episode…you’ll find out next week. I’ll just say it came at just the right time from the Classic Doctor Who YouTube channel. Both videos are combined into a single video. Enjoy.
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It’s not an end, it’s a rebrand. Hasbro, the current Power Rangers rights holder, holds the rights to use Sentai and decide when it comes out, though the partnership with Shout Factory has been pretty good to get it and other tokusatsu shows into Western hands. Earlier this week there were rumors than the Super Sentai franchise would go the way of Metal Heroes and go away. Instead, Toei is rebranding to a new name, Universe Heroes, to get around the Super Sentai controls. Interested in seeing how that works out in court, but hopefully Shout Factory still gets to distribute those shows in the US.
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The original draft for the first attempt at a Saturday morning version of the Transformers took three days to write, but before that was more brainstorming and coming up with ideas. One early idea was having the Autobots team with an auto club, and another had Wendy as the daughter of a senator who got dragged into one of Toad’s spy missions and ended up part of the team. Neither idea, and probably a bunch of others, did not make the final draft. And of course none of this ended up in the syndicated series we eventually got in any of the three seasons and two miniseries. Eventually, Hasbro and Marvel Productions went with the first-run syndication idea, a still new concept in TV and one lost in our current streaming entertainment culture.
Before that a second draft would be produced after Hasbro rejected the first one. I’ll go more into it as we go on, but I do believe it was the right decision given they had a perfectly good series plot already. Why was Jeffrey Scott not allowed to see all the existing background material? Was it some legal issue? Was Jim Shooter right about the two Marvels competing with each other? We can only guess and I’ve made my case that I believe Shooter, but the point is they already had the miniseries to go by, and they didn’t. In the second draft they would come closer to what we already knew…but what about this draft?
I already said Hasbro rejecting this was the right move, but why? Could the show have been good? Could it have been retooled into something original and would it have worked for at least a season? We can only speculate, and that’s what I’m going to.
BW Media Spotlight 