BlackGeekdom Science-Fiction from a Different Perspective

Source:  Sci-Fi Wire

Jasika Nicole plays Astrid Farnsworth on ABC’s Fringe.  Astrid is an FBI agent assigned to assist Walter Bishop in his lab.  Sci-Fi Wire has posted an interview with Jasika about plans for Astrid in season 2 of Fringe, now that Fox has renewed it.

Jasika Nicole, who plays Astrid Farnsworth on Fox’s sci-fi series Fringe, told SCI FI Wire that the show’s writers have promised to explore her character’s backstory in future episodes—though likely not before the end of the first season. Astrid is an FBI agent who works as Walter Bishop’s (John Noble) lab assistant and usually serves basic mechanical functions like hooking up electrodes and monitors.

"They’ve been working on that for a really long time, and they want to make sure that it’s perfect," Nicole said in a phone interview last week. "That’s why we haven’t seen it yet. So I’m hoping that it’s going to come in season two. We will not get that episode in season one, but I’m pretty sure that it will happen in season two, and I can’t wait to find out what’s in it, let me tell you."

Read the full interview at Sci-Fi Wire.

Posted under Articles, Television

First posted 10-25-2007

I thought we should revisit the list.  If the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles or Dollhouse bites the dust, where would they  fit on this list?  What about Journeyman?  Life on Mars?  Eli Stone?  Pushing Daisies?  My Own Worst Enemy?  Stargate Atlantis?  Anyone else have any suggestions?

Let’s face it, we’ve all had television shows that we wish weren’t canceled. But for some reason, science fiction fans have been denied quality shows. Actually, we do know the reason: ratings. You can go to any science fiction convention and still find people getting together and having panel discussions about shows that have been long gone. It isn’t like these shows don’t have fans or even in some instances started out with good ratings. Many times the shows were killed when the network got greedy and wanted to move a show to take advantage of high ratings only to lose the audience, or moving a show to get higher ratings, and the low ratings the show had disappeared. Sometimes, budget, production problems, or conflicts between producers and studios sent shows to an early death. Here is a list of shows that we thought were pretty good and were canceled before their time. Be wary, there are spoilers ahead.

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Posted under Articles, Television

There are certain reference in geek subculture that we all get.  A week ago I was talking to a friend about Morris Chestnut being signed to star in the remake of the series “V.”  Her response:  “What’s that?”   Everyone who is a geek knows about “V” whether they watched it or not.  This isn’t a test, but it could be a rough measure of where you are on the geek scale.  Some are harder then others.  But for the most part, if you are a geek, then you’ll know the movies where these quotes originate.

1.  Open the podbay doors, HAL.

2. This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.

3. I only have one rule. Everyone fights. No one quits. You don’t do your job, I’ll shoot you myself. You get me?

4.  We are the knights who say “Ni.”

5. Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

6.  Come with me, if you want to live.

7.  So say we all.

8.  I have looked into the eye of the island, and saw that it was beautiful.

9.  No. Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try.

10.  They don’t advertise for killers in the newspaper. That was my profession.

11.  Damn them.  Damn them all to hell.

12.  Where does he get those wonderful toys?

13.  I’m on Planet X looking for a dweeb who wears green fatigues. He wears glasses.

14. I know this sounds crazy, but ever since yesterday on the road, I’ve been seeing this shape. Shaving cream, pillows… Dammit! I know this. I know what this is! This means something. This is important.

15.  What’s happened to me? I must be dreaming. I feel like I can take out the world.

16.  Who’s the man? Huh? Who’s the man? Wait till I get another plane! I’m a line ya friends up right beside you! Where ya at, huh? Where ya at?

17.  It’s a robot.  Ash is a god damn robot.

18.  Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.

19.  Even though you’ve been raised as a human, you are not one of them. You have great powers, only some of which you have as yet discovered.

20. I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a most painful death.

Bonus:  How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life, wouldn’t you say?

Posted under Articles

In a previous post, I said that Dualla was the 5th cylon.  I was wrong.  It has since been revealed that Ellen Tigh is the final cylon.  Point of fact, she was not even on my list of possible cylons.  I mean, how was I supposed to know that she would die and be resurrected?  Does it all make sense?  I don’t know.  She collaborated with the cylons on New Caprica.  Twice Saul has thought that she was dead.  However, I still hold out hope that there is something to Dualla.  I know she killed herself in “Sometimes a Good Notion” but that doesn’t mean she’s going to stay dead.  She was humming the song and she also seemed to have a connection to the doll that she found on Earth.  But back to Ellen.  Anyone who says that they saw it coming is lying.  But I will say that the whole story, or at least the part that has been revealed so far, by Anders is quite intriguing.  It raises many questions.  Who created the cylons that lived on Earth?  How did they come to leave Kobol and separate themselves from the other Tribes?  Were the skinjobs and the centurions created by the same person or people?

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Posted under Articles, Fanboy Rants, Television

Spaceballs is considered a comedy classic.  I say it’s more of a cult classic, but it is also a sci-fi movie.  It was funny when I saw it as a kid, and as an adult, I still think it has some funny parts.  The scene where the black guys are coming the desert with a pick is just classic.

To me, The Running Man is one of Arnold’s great movies.  Okay, the movie might seem hookie to you, but where else would you find Yaphet Kotto, Maria Conchita Alonso, Richard Dawson, Jim Brown, Jesse Ventura, Mick Fleetwood and Dweezil Zappa all in a science fiction movie based on a book written by Steven King?

Posted under Articles, Movies

Source:  The Los Angeles Times

It’s being reported that talks have broken down between Samuel L. Jackson and Marvel about reprising his role as the one-eyed superspy and Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.  To me, it sounds like these hard economic times are making the fledgling movie studio is tightening its budget (taking into account its breakdown of talks with Terrance Howard), especially with the slate of future movies that it has already announced.  Maybe Marvel thinks it can sell its movies just based on characters and fanboys alone.  But I hope they realize that mainstream consumers aren’t interested in the Ultimate Marvel Universe, but do want to see the actors they know in big action movies.

If this interests you, please read the L.A. Times article by Geoff Boucher.

Posted under Articles, Movies, Rumors

They both started in 1966 and only a few months separated the the founding of the party and the publication of the issue.   Brian Cronin at Comic Book Resources has all the information. 

Posted under Articles, Comics

We have just elected the first African-American as President of the United States.  And this is my blog, so I can talk about it if I want to.  What is amazing to me as a geek is the fact that President-elect Obama took advantage of what we on the net call new media to not only raise an incredible amount of money and to increase the excite and participation of more young people in the electoral process.  Obama was not the first candidate to take advantage of new media.  Gov. Howard Dean saw the future of the role of the internet and that almost got him the nomination.  Ron Paul’s entire candidacy was driven by the web.  But President-elect Obama was the first candidate to not only use Myspace as a tool to reach people, but he also was all over Facebook.  He has the most twitter followers, a total of 112,000.  That’s more than the number 2 and 3 person combined. 

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Posted under Articles, Technology

Source: Blackvoices

Have you ever read somthing that was so ignorant and derogatory,  that you don’t what to say or how to address it.   Well if  you haven’t here it is.   I don’t know if this is a bad attempt at humor or just a really bad list by a ignorant person.   

If this list where on another site people would call it racist for putting Handiman at number one.   Since its on Black Voices we are suppose to over look that fact.  Somtimes we are our own worse enemy.

Posted under Articles

I saw The Happening around the same time I saw The Incredible Hulk, but chose to not do a quick review at the time. Now that I’ve had time to process the movie, I feel like I have to say something about it. There is nothing wrong with a director doing a message movie. But to me, the mark of a good director and writer, which Shayamalan is both, is the ability to convey your message subtly. There are subjects that as a viewing public, in my opinion, that we can deal with being slapped in the face with. Those would be topics like racism, sexism, child abuse and rape. Environmentalism is a serious subject no doubt, but for the most part everyone cares about the environment. But to me, its one of those things that if you’re going to make a horror movie about, you’ve got to shock us or be more creative. There are hundreds maybe thousands of movies about the danger of our advancing technology. Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Philip K. Dick and Michael Critchton (I can’t believe I put him in the same sentence with those giants of science fiction) made careers out of warning us about how great and terrifying technology can be, but they didn’t sacrifice good story telling just to make their point. Simply having people drop dead from toxins released by plants is not going to cut it.

I just heard an interview with M. Night Shayamalan and he had the audacity to not only compare his movie and story in one breath to The Birds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Night of the Living Dead. He says the goal was to create a “B-Science fiction movie about a subject, where you have a great ride, you jump and you’re scared, crying and you do all those things as an audience member, and then at the end, the themes of the movie have you thinking of something a little deeper.”

The thing is that to me those movies dealt with those underlying issues in a more subtle way. (And honestly, I have no clue what the underlying theme of the Birds was) His movie was an in your face message movie. I don’t have a problem with that, but I do have a problem with him thinking that his film making is anywhere near the caliber of the other directors and writers of the movies that he mentioned. His movie is more like Spike Lee, a message. We can argue of the execution of getting his message across, but I have seen Hitchcock movies, and Shayamalan is no Hitchcock, despite what he thinks.

And unfortunately for him, if The Happening had been done by a first time director, many people would have been okay with it, but Shayamalan’s success means that we have come to expect better than average for him, and soon his credit from his early successes are going to run out, and he’s going to have a hard time getting anyone to come to his movies. Between Shayamalan and Tim Story (director of Fantastic Four and Rise of the Silver Surfer), minority directors are going to be told to stay away for Science Fiction.

I said before and I have told people not to waste time seeing it, but I think I’ve changed my mind.  I am not going to tell people not to see the movie, but just be aware when you go into it that there are no surprises, there is nothing being hidden from you, nothing to figure out, and there is nothing unexpected happening, no pun intended.

Posted under Articles, Movies, Reviews