I haven’t seen enough of Appleseed to make what I’m sure are obvious references.
Retropunk #1
Markosia (August, 2014)
“Stray Cats And Tin Men”
WRITERS: James Surdez & Matthew Ritter
ARTIST: Jhomar Soriano
I’ve never been interested in The Sopranos and that boils down to personal preference over any issue with the show. Watching a mobster having a strained family life and seeing a therapist is not something I care about since we’re talking about people who shake other people down for money, promote crime, shoot each other and anyone they consider a “problem”, and are generally evil to everyone, including itself at times. I don’t want to feel anything for these guys except happy when they reform or get locked away for a very long time. No matter how good a show it is, and apparently it is a good one, I just don’t care.
I have no qualms with the creator of the show, David Chase. He saw something that makes for good drama, went with it, and was rewarded for his hard work. No problems here. The question is whether or not he’s right when it comes to Hollywood wanting him to dumb down his work, something he discussed in a recent interview with The Sunday Times. That link is to the Wayback Machine because that’s the link Bounding Into Comics used when discussing the article for whatever reason they had and considering the piece is kind of old I’m not going to go crazy trying to reach the original version.
The interview (and we’ll ignore the unnecessary election talk at the end…no, writer Jonathan Dean, you DON’T have to ask every American you interview about politics and how Hollywood hates Trump because I doubt anyone in the UK cares!) goes over the trouble Chase had getting his mobster show on television the way he wanted it until HBO picked it up, and how “prestige” shows are in trouble because the studios and TV networks don’t want to make it. Much of his statements don’t surprise me, since Hollywood thinks we’re all stupid since that makes the demographics easier. I do have a few notes of my own, though.
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He’s still upset that his season of the Sat AM show was canceled.
Sonic The Hedgehog #64
Archie Comic Publications (November, 1998)
COLORIST: Ken Penders
EDITOR: Justin Gabrie
“In Search Of…”
WRITER: Karl Bollers
PENCILER: Steven Butler
INKER: Pam Edlund
LETTERER: J.P. Money
“On His Majesty’s Secret Service”
WRITER/INKER: Ken Penders
PENCILER: Art Mawhinney
LETTERER: Jeff Powell
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WARNING: Contains swearing and spoilers
Catch more from Saberspark on YouTube
Evil Scrappy and lesbian Velma. Are we sure James Gunn didn’t work on this series? I wish this show was the only Scooby-Doo related bad news. Check the previous article for more bad news.
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I could easily just say “no”, but it wouldn’t be much of an article if I didn’t explain why.
Variety is reporting that a live-action Scooby-Doo streaming series is coming out from every animation fan’s worst nightmare, Netflix. Not surprising that a service that seems to hate animation these days and wants to make every anime and cartoon into a live-action de-make has set their sights on the cowardly canine and his mystery-solving teen buddies. They’ve “improved” everything from Cowboy BeBop to Avatar: The Last Airbender in an increasing showing that they hate animation even more than modern Disney seems to with their own library and legacy, between live-action remakes and mediocre animations coming out of the binge addicts at Netflix.
The project has what Variety calls a “script-to-series” commitment as a hour long drama series, with some big names behind it. Not necessarily the ones with a great resume, just a big one. A co-production of Midnight Radio and Bertani Productions, there is no cast announced because its presumably too early. Also, no plot details as of this writing. All we know is that it’s supposed to be based on the Scooby-Doo franchise. Then again, that’s what they tell us about Velma, and we all know how that’s crashed and burned.
My question is why they want to make a live-action Scooby-Doo so bad, and make the episodes an hour long? Both have not been a great success for this franchise in the past. The live-action movies, both in theaters and direct-to-video, are not the best received, while the only previous attempt at hour-long unmaskings was The New Scooby-Doo Movies, which had most of their budget going to their guest-stars because it sure wasn’t going to the animation. (Meanwhile, Scooby-Doo And Guess Who went a half-hour and supported the animation but still boosted the star cameo budget by hiring the cheapest writers they could find in what feels like a parody of Scooby Movies.) Honestly, everything about this makes so little sense to me that I had to write about it.
BW Media Spotlight 
Star Trek’s Prime Directive Vs Real World Cultural History
Let’s be honest: Starfleet General Order #1 is nothing more than a cheap plot device, a way to restrict the writers and cause moral drama. As we’ve gone over in previous explorations (which sadly did not include the above novel as it really didn’t cover it, and I found that depressing in my Chapter By Chapter review), there are two reasons listed for the Prime Directive to be ignored: the needs of Starfleet, which can be interpreted in different ways to work around the spirit of the Directive, and the safety of the ship, which suffers the same problem.
In universe and in the mind of Gene Roddenberry, the goal of the Prime Directive is to push back against a colonialist action, intentional or otherwise. Colonialism may not have been the best thing for the indigenous people and in some cases didn’t do the colonizers much good, either. In practice, however, is it possible that in fact the Directive is part of an outdated view of culture and other civilizations based on a self-interested view of culture and our own hubris?
This is the argument made by the host of YouTube channel Trekspertise in the following video. By looking at the actual history of colonialism in the real history of the real planet Earth, the host goes into why the Prime Directive is based on outmoded views of human culture and cross-cultural interaction in the past…and might be a bit racist, or at least culturalist, as well.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on May 2, 2024 in Television Spotlight and tagged commentary, Prime Directive, Star Trek, Trekspertise.
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