The largest block of text I’ve ever skipped.

I’ve been reading Atlas Strugged since mid November, picking it up and reading bits and pieces here and there. I decided to read it after it appeared like five times in the same week.

The end is in sight however with just 100 or so pages to go, and I’ve got complaints. If I were to meet them I wound smack most of the characters around. The use of “lighted” really bumps me out of the novel, everytime someone lights a cigarette. And of course the speeches made continuously are long winded. This came to a culmination when a speech is made in chapter 7 of part 3 that lasts from page 1009 to 1069. Sixty pages of rambling garbage about man and objectivism and blah, blah, blah. I, as said in the title, didn’t read 90% of it, I just gave up after 7 pages and started counting pages.

Well I’m just happy that I’m near the end of this book. Have I gained new philosophical stand points? Yes. Are they that of Objectivism? No. Does it involve punching out anyone who follows Objectivism? Yes.

I’m going to finally get around to reading Starship Troopers after I’m done with Atlas Shruged. With any hope I’ll enjoy it 100 times more than I’ve enjoyed Atlas Shrugged.

Review: Stargate SG-1 S01 E07

Episode Title: The Nox

Synopsis(Link to Stargate Wiki)

The Nox are unbelievable awesome. This “review” will basically be about the Nox. They are pacifists almost to a fault, and yet I don’t dislike them like I do most pacifists. Some of their lines rank very highly on my list of favourite Stargate quotes.

<Opher takes some sap from a tree, tastes it then offers it to Daniel> ”You?”
<Daniel>  ”No thank you, I’m trying to, quit?”

<Opher> “How old am I? How do you mark time?”
<Daniel> ”Years, days, uh… A day is one revolution of our planet. A tear is one revolution around our sun. There are 365 days in a year, so…”
<Opher> ”Then I am 432 years old.”
<Daniel> “Well, uh… you look great.”
<Opher> “…Thank you.”

<Daniel> ”Why did you not bury the Stargate? Do you know that that would stop the?”
<Opher> “And they would know someone had buried it.”
<Daniel> “Right, of course”

<Anteaus> “The very young do not always do what they are told.”

<Anteaus> ”Maybe one day you will learn that your way is not the only way.”

The Nox sadly only appear in two further episodes and even then only Lya. They do however get mentioned as one of the Four Great Races. 10/10

Review: Stargate SG-1 S01 E06

Episode Title: Cold Lazarus

Synopsis(Link to Stargate Wiki) 

The concept of energy based lifeforms not knowing that corporeal beings die and after they do, they are dead is just a little bit close to Deep Space Nines “The Emisary”. Though Jack getting over his sons death… no he didn’t really get over it. Well whatever happened was good. Teal’cs reaction to the music was very similar to my reaction to the past decade of music.

Once again nothing really wrong with the episode it’s just boring.
3/10 I found it just a smidge more boring than the last one.

Review: Stargate SG-1 S01 E05

Episode Title: The First Commandment

Synopsis(Link to Stargate Wiki)

Well it wasn’t until SG-1 had set up camp that I thought of anything to write. The army ration joke was clichéd and yet still funny. When Carter says “The cave dwellers must have loved him for that” it doesn’t sound like Amanda Tapping, why? Is it Amanda Tapping only speaking differently? Did they have to loop the dialogue and used a different actress? And yes a number of things happen over 7 days in the bible, and 40, be it days or years. This is a clear sign that God is a fan of Star Tre… sorry wrong series. I couldn’t really think of anything to say after the camp scene either.

4/10 not bad, just boring.

Review: Stargate SG-1 S01 E04

Episode Title: The Broca Divide

Synopsis(link to Stargate Wiki)

Everybody with the obvious exception of the non-military Daniel and Teal’c are in dress uniform, which strikes me as odd because there doesn’t appear to be any dignitaries or guests around, well the marines are there but being SG-3 they wouldn’t be guests. I’m not saying they should be in full BDU but why aren’t they in day dress or work wear, whatever you want to call it, as they are in other episodes? They can’t get an image of the other side because the lights were out and it was very dark but surely the US military could afford a decent camera?

In the ”Land of Light” is it perpetual daylight or does night fall? I guess it must be perpetual day or it wouldn’t be the land of light. The brown tank top with bare midrift is a huge improvement over the hideous blue dress. This episode marks the first appearance of Dr Janet Fraiser played by Teryl Rothery, where she saves the SGC from certain doom for the first of what will become many times.  The notes I wrote for this review are short, because half way through the episode I decided to get something to eat and didn’t pause it because I thought I would be quicker.

For some reason I can’t stop with the Star Trek analogies but, Teal’c is kinda like Data, that is if Data were a karge black man with wit drying than a desert.

6/10

Quotes:

“Maybe I have some kind of natural immunity”
“Perhaps you will develope symptoms later”
“Thank you for the moral support”
Daniel and Teal’c discussing the virus.

Review: Stargate SG-1 S01 E03

Episode Title: Emancipation

Synopsis(Link to Stargate Wiki)

Mongol culture made for an interesting backdrop for the episode. The continuous overstating of Amanda Tappings beauty got old fast, yes she’s an attractive woman but not as much as the punk ass kid made her out to be. And the way Daniel, Jack and Teal’c react when she puts on what has to be the ugliest blue dress in the history of science fiction is just ridiculous. I mean if she were showing some midrift like in the next episode I could see that reaction as plausible.

The high points of the episode would be the actors who portrayed the chiefs, Soon-Tek Oh as Moughal the good chief and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Turghan the evil chief.

This episode is about the chauvanistic culture dealing with Carter. The main plot is gender equality, oh look it’s a plot from 1971! Slavery was thrown in as a B plot. Why is it that American writers keep writing stories appologising for slavery adn yet don’t appologise. The wrost part about this episode has been deciding to give it a 1/10 or a 0/10?

So to make up time because I’m not even half way through the episode, It’s tangent time. The redish brown blanket with green stripe that appears behind carter at 0:28:51 is an Australian Army surpluss blanket. Well my father says that it is, it could just be dyed that way. Either way they spent little on it, dying and raiding a disposal store are on the same level of cost, a smidge above nothing. Personally I’m going to side with my dad because well, it’s more interesting.

0.5/10

Quotes:

“What is an Oprah” – Teal’c

Review: Stargate SG-1 S01 E02

Episode Title: The Enemy Within

Synopsis (link to Wikipedia) (I link to the Wikipedia entries because I’m terrible an synopsising, they end up either a single sentence or an entire page.)

Starting off with a vaudevillian, “No, no, no, you go ahead” “Oh but you were here first” bit between O’Neill and Kawalsky, with Hammond again showing his father figure role by telling them to stop, and that they’ll go where he tell them. The Iris has unfortunately aged badly and looks flat, and appears to be a circular plane with a texture on it. The surgery was well executed and tense. Colonel Kennedy was what you would expect from an intelligentce officer, paranoid, arrogant and amoral.

Over all a slower paced, less action, story driven episode, that I didn’t enjoy as much as the pilot but I still liked it.

5/10

Quotes:

“They’ll be in for a suprise”
“Your iris will be closed, they will be crushed.”
“Suprise”
-Jack and Teal’c discussing the Goa’uld

Review: Stargate SG-1 S01 E01

Episode Title: Children of the Gods

Synopsis (link to Wikipedia)

The episode started off well with the mysterious appearance of an alien and his guards coming to earth to kidnap a woman for an unknown and sinister purpose. The sheet used to cover the gate was sucked back behind it has the gate started turning, but personally I think it would have been cooler if it had been disintegrated by the “kawoosh”. That would have been a nice subtle way to illustrate how dangerous the “kawoosh” is, but it would have been impossible to pull off without CG which was expensive in 1997. General Hammond appeared to have a sort of smirk like grin when threatening to bomb Abydos, almost like he knew Jackson was living there. The writing for Samantha Carter was at least for the briefing scene where she first makes an appearance, very boring and overly feminist, something even Amanda Tapping admits too. I did like when O’Neil told her that he has no problem with her being a woman, it’s that she’s a scientist that he doesn’t like.

I quite liked the keyboard used to dial the gate which had the alpha-numerics replaced with the gate symbols. When they first step through the gate the team has frost on them, a side effect of gate travel, this is seen again later when they go to Chulak, but is soon abandoned for unknown reasons. In my opinion instead of just abandoning it they should have had it so the frost only happens for your first 10 trips by which time you’ve acclimated to gate travel, which would explain why Apophis and his Serpent Guards do not have frost on them when they arrive on Earth.

Michael Shanks is a great actor as shown in future episodes, but not so much here. Not to say his performance was bad, it just wasn’t as good as he eventually became. The evening meal scene was corny and poorly executed. Christopher Judge played Teal’c as this odd kind of mix between a calm, centred, logical Vulcan and an unstoppable Klingon. Richard Dean Anderson convincingly (to me at least) played a seasoned soldier with a refined sense of humour. Amanda Tapping did the best she could with the horrible writing for her character and did quite well. Peter Williams managed to make Apophis flamboyantly evil yet still a terrifying adversary(in my notes I wrote something before terrifying but even I can’t read my chicken scratch). Hammond already appeared to show his father like role when concerned for the team.

The music was scored beautifully in this episode, something that continued through out the series. The distortion of the voices for the Goa’uld was hit and miss, while Peter Williams sounded awesome as Apophis, especially when he said “Lovely” when viewing the Sargent kidnapped at the beginning, the other Goa’uld sounded weak, and almost as thought the distortion was an afterthought. When Teal’c removed his obviously rubber armour after betraying Apophis, he drops it on the ground with a loud audible clank. The use of model and effect shots from the film in order to save money caused repetition and errors, for instance when the hatch opens to drop the rings from the Death Glider, it is clearly the ceiling of a large stone room and not the underside of a fighter. The rings themselves look dated and un-detailed. Some of the muzzle-flashes look like the cameres weren’t synced up and added in post.

Quotes:

“You.” - Teal’c

“Another fine day on planet Kawalsky.” - Major Charles Kawalsky

All in all a good start to a great series, earning:

7/10