Star Wars Legacy: Fight Another Day

Legacy #32-33

Some minor changes to how I'm going to be running these articles. First of all I'm taking away the "Updates and Review" from the title, as that is fairly self-explanatory, and instead I'm adding the story arc title. I'll cover the issues arc by arc, grouping two and four parters together and treating one-shots separately and give you the titles of the issues.

I'll start with some updates.

Sith Updates

Vul Isen

Species: Givin
Sex: Male
Homeworld: Korriban
Position: Scientist
First Appearance: Legacy #32 (Fight Another Day, part 1)






Vul Isen is a fully fledged force-using member of the One Sith order under Darth Krayt. His talents, however, are not in combat or powerful force use, but in Science. He combined his knowledge of science with his use of the force to create new techniques and tools to serve the order. He had good relations with Darth Wyyrlok, and under his guidance created a water variation of a Sith Leviathan to destroy the Mon Calamari. He also had experimented with toxins and bio-weapons, but none were suitable for the task. Interestingly his field meant that he did not earn a "Darth" title and instead of the usual black gear he wore a standard Imperial military uniform in his work.

Plot

This issue returns to the planet Dac, where the Mon Calamari race have been enslaved and are being exterminated by the Sith forces on the planet. An Imperial underwater assault team find a colony of hiding Mon Calamri and begin to hunt them. But the Imperials are counter-attacked by the Mon Calamari ranger, a secret fighting force using their own weapons and ships. They drive off the Imperials with the aid of Treis Sinde, the Imperial Knight, who stayed behind to help the resistance.

Darth Azard meets up with Vul Isen and together they summon and command the Sea Leviathan and test it's power on a group of Mon Calamari captives. They then send it off in hunt of the resistance. A scout group encounters the monster and reports back to Treis and they formulate a plan.

The Leviathan tracks the rangers and a group of refugees to a crevasse and begins to attack them. But Treis uses the force to summon a number of Devilsquid, a monstrous native Mon Calamari beast, to attack the Leviathan and drag it down into the depths. They disable the Sith's underwater craft and escape to fight another day.

Another great story from the Legacy team, I want to do a few more posts covering the characters and setting of Legacy, but I've a few other things I want to catch up on too. Hope you enjoyed this.

SF Masterworks # 20 - A Scanner Darkly

I'm trying to catch up on some lost blogging, following up on posts I haven't done for a while in case they get lost, so I'll start off with a book review from the masterworks series, of which I have read a scant few, mostly by Philip K Dick - here is another.

















One of the most bewildering of PKD's already bewildering collection of novels, and yet one of the most powerful. This one doesn't reach as far into the future as most of his novels, there are none of the usual precogs, martian colonies and androids that are the author's hallmarks. Rather we only jump a few fictional years ahead to a future where Substance D, a narcotic in a league above all current ones available.

As last time - I'll post up a more concise summary than I'm able to conjure from a summary of the series at SFSite.com

"It follows the story of Officer Fred, an undercover narcotics agent who is so deeply undercover that even his superiors don't know his street identity, Bob Arctor. Consequently, Fred is given the task of monitoring Bob.

The problem is, Fred/Bob isn't sure which side he is on anymore, since he more than half believes in the drug culture lifestyle he has been living. Furthermore, he is so messed up on a dangerous psychotropic hallucinogen called Substance D, that he is losing touch with... well, everything. The literal scanner of the title (seeing "through a scanner darkly") is a holographic scanner set up in Bob's house. When Fred watches the replay of the scanner tapes, he is soon unable to figure out what Bob is up to, having forgotten he is monitoring himself."

This book has the most impact as it relates most closely to the author's life and the impact of drug abuse on him and his friends. It ends with a moving piece from the author detailing how they were like kids playing in the road, and no one told them about the danger, following this is a list of many of his friends from that time who are sick, in institutions or lost along the way.

Not always the most exciting read, but certainly one of the most moving.

SF at the Movies - May/June/July 09 + Word out to my people

Well it's been a long time since I've posted here and an apology again to all r4eaders who expect to actually see something here on a regular basis. Things are starting to return to normal and with the holiday season approaching I anticipate more time to dedicate to the blog. You'll know about these already, but I like to keep up traditions and so here are the contents of my latest 'at the movies' post.

Star Trek

Released 08/05/09












A movie taking us back to the lives of Kirk, Spock and the original cast brought back to life by a new cast and a new director. J.J. Abrams seems to want to put his stamp on everything and Star Trek is the latest brand to succumb. The movie was bold and daring and made good use of the character's quirks without pandering to the typical self-referential dialogue these types of films go for. The plot was exciting and dramatic, and the enemy was intense. The whole 'enemy from the future' angle was very fitting to the genre, but I did find the whole alternate timeline it throws up a little bewildering from a fan perspective - still very enjoyable though.

Terminator Salvation

Released 21/5/09












The latest addition to the famous franchise took us right into the scenario only glimpsed in the previous movies - the war between humans and Skynet. The setting and the casting were very well done, you got a real sense of the impact of the war on the survivors and a glimpse into more groups than just the resistance. John Connor was well placed as an enigmatic soldier, but not yet the leader figure he would become. The inclusion of Marcus Wright, a terminator who thinks he's human, and the reintroduction of Arnie via CG made this film a non-stop action thriller well worth seeing, and a worthy follower of the Terminator saga.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Released 24/06/09












Not necessarily the best of the movies out, but certainly one of the most enjoyable. The movie starts with a force of Autobots, allied with the U.S. Military taking out Decepticons hidden on Earth. We see Sam, the hero of the first movie, heading to Uni, but as he goes he finds a piece of the allspark, which burns information into his mind and attracts the attention of a powerful figure - The Fallen who sets a plan and raises a Decepticon army and resurrects Megatron to fight the Autobots to get his hands on a power source that will make him invincible...and destroy humanity. Very, very entertaining.

OK - enough of that, I've a feeling I missed something, let me know if that's the case. Lastly I'd like to put the word out for some of my readers who are following the blog on Facebook and on here. Most are personal friends of mine but it's been good to know that other people read this blog so I'd like to thank:

Cleo and Clayton - who have been following the blog for a while now

Chrissy for commenting and for reading - you can read her excellent blog, chronicling her TV-watching adventures HERE

Jayson for being my first follower on Blogger - read the best and latest Sci-Fi news at Nerdvana

And...erm...Hockey HotChicks, I'd like to thank er...them too!

Humour

The blog's been rather silent, with all of us busy with our studies, but here's something I dug up. (I apologize to any vegetarians out there)

Doctor Who - New series. new species part 19

Half Term for me so a chance to sneak in a bit of content while I can. I've a number of things I want to write about, but as the last special was quite a while ago now (in the UK at least) I think I should probably write about the Easter episode of Doctor Who and the new alien species it introduced. I thought the bus teleporting into the desert war rather reminiscent of Jumper and the rip-offs and references just keep coming on and on after that...

Tritovore












Humanoid flies have been a staple of Sci-Fi TV and movies since the '50s so I was hardly bowled over when these creatures showed up on set. I thought maybe they'd at least have an interesting background, but the crew managed to rip themselves off by reusing a concept from the animated series - a fly species that live by consuming the waste of other species - clever, if they hadn't already done it. The bugs then managed to top even this by forgetting how their guns worked - they were vaguely entertaining it must be said, but like the rest of the episode, they could have been so much more.

Tritovores were a spacefaring active in galactic culture by the early 21st Century. They had their own spaceships and weapons adapted to their physiology and had advanced translation technology for communication with other races, who couldn't often comprehend their clicking and whirring dialect - this technology could even detect lies in a users voice. They obtained or funded this technology by entering into a mutually beneficial agreement with other sentient species - they would take away organic waste, which they could consume, in return for the goods and services that planet could offer. This worked well for most of the traders, except for a ship that was headed for the planet San Helios...

Stingrays










I found the monsters to be somewhat a rip-off of Pitch Black's beasties, though nowhere near as terrifying or as cool. They might have been intriguing if it weren't for the fact that they were such and obvious copy of that film's plot - trapped on a desert planet, must escape before we get eaten by a merciless swarm of creatures - yep, definitely seen that one before, the Doctor even wears shades, though admittedly they weren't goggles. I did like the fact that they were a monstrous swarm, not an enemy the Doctor could defeat by talking, just mindless beasts - the wormhole concept was interesting if a little unbelievable. They did provide a good sense of peril, and the showdown with UNIT was cool, but I wasn't particularly bowled over.

'Stingray' is the code name given by UNIT to these deadly creatures, based on their resemblence to the Earth shark subspecies of the same name. They are a massive swarm of flying creatures that travel from world to world consuming all they come across, they engulf a planet swarming round and round it until all matter, organic or otherwise is consumed and only sand and waste remains. Their strength seems to be their sheer mass as they are susceptible to heavy weapons fire and vulnerable to coldness but in their large numbers few things can stand against them. As an additional defence any metal they consume is carefully digested and extruded to form a tough exoskeleton. Once all matter on a world is consumed they circle it repeatedly until their momentum and mass opens a wormhole to another world they can lay waste to. By this method the creatures arruived at and destroyed San Helios a bustling, cultured world and were about to breach Earth until the Doctor close their wormhole and redirected them to uninhabited worlds where they could keep living without destroying others.

I hope you've enjoyed this forray into the Doctor's world - more from their adventures when the next special 'Waters of Mars' airs.

Deadpool

The New Wolverine film has created some new interest in perhaps my favourite comic character, Deadpool.
As many of you will know he displays his fourth-wall breaking abilities from time to time and provides the Marvel universe with some much needed humour. The fact that he is present in almost every major marvel event is also amusing, providing an integral comical side to some shocking events such as Secret Invasion.
(This is when the skrulls clone him to create an immortal army, which they then recruit him to train)


But the new film has caused some confusion regarding his origins. I'll kindly explain (albeit in a simpler fashion because Wade's got a convoluted past, like most superheroes)
Suffering from cancer, mercenary Wade Wilson volunteers in the Weapon X program as part of an experiment to transplant Wolverine's healing factor. This cures his cancer but makes him insane and horribly disfigured. Deemed a failure, he is sent to "The Workshop" to be experimented on. He escapes, kills people etc. Ala Wolverine.
His only power is the healing factor, though it could be argued his sense of humour is just as deadly. He also has the ability to produce weapons from seemingly thin air, claiming this process involves "a lot of lubricant".
Although a sadistic, comical character, Deadpool has been involved in some more serious story arcs, most notably "The Burnt Offering" of "Cable & Deadpool". This involves Cable's struggle to deal with his immense power, and his solution which involves his self sacrifice.
This is pretty much an excuse for another post, but there we go.
Although I do have some new news, a Deadpool spin-off has been confirmed. And judging by the way Deadpool breaks the fourth wall in the after-credits scene in Wolverine, we can only hope it will be as good as the comics.
Well, i'll leave you with one of the first confrontations between Wolverine and Deadpool.

SF at the Movies, April 09 - and an apology.

Hello readers (wow, feels fun to say that an mean it...hopefully)

I must first of all apologise for the lack of content on this blog. My cohorts and I have all entered particularly busy and hectic stages of our work and academic years and so time for blogging is short, as it is for most other things. So the blog has been pretty quiet, and is set to remain so for the next few weeks at least. There have been a number of posts that I wanted to write but simply didn't have the time and again, this sorry state of affairs is going to carry on as far as I can tell for the near future and I apologise both now and in advance for the lack of content here.

In fact, our only solace is that now and again we manage to squeeze an hour or two to visit the cinema and bask in some Sci-Fi glory on a whopping screen. We're already in May, but most of April's movies will still be on release, so here's a look at what was out this month.

Monsters Vs Aliens

Released 02/04/09









One of the funniest films I have ever seen, I was crying laughing all the way through the trailer and I just had to see the film, which did not disappoint at all. For those who still may be confused, this film doesn not feature Xenomorphs at all, but rather a tentacled menace who challenges the best Earth has to offer - the best, that is, except a small team of monsters kept hidden away by the U.S. Government. The film makes a number of hilarious rip-offs of classic Sci-Fi films, but doesn't rely on them for it's comedy, being an original and hilarious piece - B.O.B. the indestructible, but also brianless, gelatic mass is particularly funny throughout. Well worth seeing.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Released 28/04/09










The next X-Men movie is easily one of the best as it looks into the beginnings of fan favourite character Wolverine and how he came to be the amnesiac metal clawed warrior we saw in the first X-Men flick. The film takes us on a whistle stop tour of Logan's life and the wars he fought in and the allies he made along the way. Then tragedy strikes as Logans love is killed by someone he trusted and all his allegiances and friendships come under question as he seeks revenge and answers, he finds both, but they drag him into a much bigger world than he would like. The film makes good use of small parts from other mutant comic heroes and even a few of
Wolverine's future associates make an appearance, but not wasted ones. Well that's probably already crossing the spoiler alert barrier so I'll stop there and just recommend that you give this movie a whirl.

Well this may be goodbye for a while - but keep an eye on the event horizon I'll be back soon I promise.

Oh, and so you know, this is the 150th post, at least we've hit a landmark eh?!