urbeatle, posts by tag: tv - LiveJournal

One thing I've been wondering lately: who are the equivalents of Huell Howser for other states or regions?

For my friends in other states who aren't completely aware: the late Huell Howser was a California TV personality who made several TV series for the California PBS stations, the most famous of which was California's Gold, in which he visited any place in California he thought was precious, beautiful, or of historical interest. He had a couple other shows as well: Visiting, which seems to concentrate more on people and businesses, California's Parks, California Missions, Road Trip, etc. Obviously, almost everything was about California, since I think he financed almost all his travel himself, although he did a couple shows on Alaska, Las Vegas, and Moscow (Russia.) Many, but not all, of his shows have been digitized and put online by Chapman University as part of the Huell Howser memorial archives.

There's one other California-centric PBS show which is sort of like Huell Howser's shows: Rob on the Road. He may be local to KVIE/KQED only. But the stories tend to be much shorter and to the point, and aren't quite the same as Huell's.

But what I've been wondering is: if I wanted a wealth of information about roadside attractions, points of interest, tiny bits of local history, and the like for another state or a region, via a TV show similar to the Huell Howser shows, where would I look? Surely, there ought to be local travel shows for New England, or Massachusetts at the very least, since WGBH seems to produce nationally-distributed PBS shows. Some other stations might produce regional-interest travel/history shows as well.

I have two cousins who, not long ago, got into the new Doctor Who, and then discovered that the show had been going on for a a few more years than they thought, and kind of balked at the huge backlog of stuff to watch. But obviously, you don’t need to watch every single episode, because not all of them were great, and even the good ones are probably too numerous for anyone except a die-hard fan to slog through.

So, I pared it down to just the essential stuff: enough of each Doctor to give a taste of what the past incarnations were like, focusing on episodes that fill in important details of the “mythology”.

And I published it on Facebook. Big mistake, as I discovered when I tried to track it down again for another person. Facebook is terrible for finding specific stuff you or a friend wrote. I eventually found it, though, and edited it a bit, and I’m finally republishing it here, so that I won’t lose it again.

First Doctor: An Unearthly Child (4 episodes) and The Daleks (7 episodes.) Optionally, The Dalek invasion of Earth (6 episodes.)

Second Doctor: Just the last one, “The War Games” (10 episodes.)

Third Doctor: Spearhead from Space (4 episodes) and Terror of the Autons (4 episodes).

Fourth Doctor: Genesis of the Daleks (6 episodes), The Deadly Assassin (4 episodes), The Invasion of Time (6 episodes), and The Keeper of Traken (4 episodes). Optionally, The Pirate Planet (4 episodes) because it was written by Douglas Adams, and Logopolis (4 episodes).

Fifth Doctor: Castrovalva (4 episodes), The Five Doctors (90 minute special), and Resurrection of the Daleks (2 episodes).

Sixth Doctor: The Trial of a Time Lord (10 episodes).

Seventh Doctor: Time and the Rani (4 episodes) and Remembrance of the Daleks (4 episodes).

Eighth Doctor: It’s just one two-hour movie, but not very good. Skip it, unless you feel up to it.

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In a forum somewhere, when someone asked about the influence of movies and TV on early D&D, they followed up with this comment:

I'd assume that because this was pre-Star Wars that the visual mediums would have had much less of an impact than they do today in gaming culture.

Now, I didn't want to comment in that thread because the person wasn't saying this in some kind of demeaning manner, but honestly, so that makes them "one of today's lucky 10,000", as xkcd put it a little while ago. It's no crime to not be aware of how many pre-Star Wars fantasy/sci-fi films and TV series there were, or to have no direct exposure to the bulk of them, perhaps based on pre-conceptions.

But man, that's kind of stunning.

I was posting some idle speculation to a forum about what Doctor Who would have looked like if it had been made by an American company, but back in the '60s or thereabouts. And it might not have looked too bad:

Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka would have made a great Doctor. Or, going earlier, maybe Rex Reason or Michael Rennie. Vincent Price would have been The Master. The interior shots of the TARDIS would resemble the command deck of the saucer in This Island Earth plus the Krell power core from Forbidden Planet. Cybermen would have looked more like Gort. The Daleks would still be conical, but the dome would be transparent and would contain the Martian leader from Invaders from Mars.

And, of course, there'd have to be an interocitor somewhere.

And then it hit me: The Doctor is an atomic-age horror scientist-hero, like Rex Reason, although he has a touch of the atomic-age smug alien, like Michael Rennie or Exeter (This Island Earth.) The thematic core of the series expresses the same values as the scientist-hero. Solving problems with a mix of genius and feeling. Definitely the central figure, but enlisting the aid of the government or military when possible, as long as they are willing to fight the menace with some measure of morality. Earth vs. the Flying Saucers would have made a perfect Doctor Who story. So would a lot of atomic-age-horror movies.

The break-out character in New Girl?

Schmidt.

The fact that he's high-strung and a douche makes him an endless source of great humor. Especially since he's a harmless douche, and is aware of his own douche-dom. He's even willing to put money in the Douche Jar anytime he does something douche-like. But he won't change, 'cause he likes the way he is.

I tend to watch a lot of fantasy/sci-fi/horror on TV, but a lot of stuff I used to watch is now either finished or only available on channels I no longer get. So I've been scraping around for new TV series that will fit into my preferred niche -- and the pickings are slim.

Some of them just seem to be scheduled wrong, so I rarely watch them. Terra Nova is one of those, as is Once Upon a Time. At least, it's more charitable to say "they're in the wrong time schedule" than to admit that I watched a couple episodes of Terra Nova and couldn't muster up any interest. Same applies to the modern-day segments of Once Upon a Time, although I've watched a bit more of that because the fairytale segments are more interesting. The storyline split across two time periods is annoying, badly handled, and obviously done because they were afraid audiences wouldn't buy a straight fairytale storyline. Cowards.

Grimm is similar to Once Upon a Time in that the people in charge obviously want to tap into the horror fanbase, similar to OUaT's tapping into the magic fanbase, but the producers were unwilling to commit fully. It winds up looking like a very toned down Buffy, Angel, or Supernatural. The hero's abilities are minimal and he doesn't really exploit them to any degree; he's really just a cop to hunts criminals who are secretly subhuman, but only he can tell. Stories are kind of ho-hum as a result, but I'm still sticking with it.

Person of Interest, in the same way, is borderline science fiction/superhero. No costumes, no powers, no gadgets, just an ex-CIA dude and a guy who built a terrorism- and crime-predicting computer for the government. Thus, the tech is just a little itty bit more advanced than reality. It's actually the more interesting of the four shows, but I still feel cheated, even though it has "Ben" from Lost and he's doing a pretty good job in a paranoid good-guy role.

Those are the shows that started with the fall season, but there have been two new mid-season replacements: Alcatraz and The River. Both are further along on the fantastic motif scale than the previous four: Alcatraz has the backstory that everyone on the island when the prison closed actually disappeared, and now they're coming back, without any signs of age. It's also got a Lost alumnus ("Hurley".) But despite the backstory and hints of future mystery-tinged with sci-fi, the storyline is basically Brimstone without demonic powers. It's kind of early to tell (only saw two episodes,) but The River has a pretty decent bundle of supernatural horror ideas, but the presentation (all done as a fake cinema verité) is really pretty lame, as is every single bit of action or dialogue that the main characters are involved in.

Which is sad, because it seems to be the only new "fantasy" series that is willing to commit to a fantastic premise.

It looks like *everyone* forgot about Rabbit Hole Day. Usually, it's just me.

I forgot to mention I've been watching New Girl, the sitcom starring Zooey Deschanel. The commercials didn't look all that funny, nor did the clips I saw on Ferguson, plus as I've reported here, I've found my Zooey Deschanel experiences to be uneven (one movie I can't remember in any detail, two bad movies, one good movie, one good job in an otherwise bad movie.) So I wasn't planning to watch it. I blame gmdreiafor changing my mind.

The show was funnier than its previews. It's got this weird simultaneously wacky and low-key quality. For example, the cat that was raised by birds. There are some really contrived bits; they're obviously planning this as a long-term "boy (Nick) and girl (Jess) meet cute" story. So, like all sitcoms in the last thirty years with this kind of plot line, they had a "see each other naked by accident" episode.

But despite the failings, I like it quite a bit. If only I could remember to watch it...

I should also talk about the current crop of borderline sci-fi shows, but I'll save that for later.

I have to say, I'm finding those TV commercials about mayhem waaaay funnier that I should, considering they're for an insurance company and I despise the insurance industry.

Th first mayhem commercial was OK, nothing special. But the one about the blind spot and the GPS locator crack me up.

A while ago, I was watching reruns of some mystery show -- probably Psych, but might have been Criminal Minds -- when a character mentioned that a woman said she loved someone "with her glances". Except in the closed captioning, it was written as "with her glans".

Remember when I said that the main CIA supervisor in Torchwood: Miracle Day is ... Newman? From Seinfeld?

Well, his boss is Q (John de Lancie.)

Man, this series is moving slowly, especially compared to the usual Russell T. Davies "let's rush through this too fast" approach to stories. Almost done, though!

Side note: I briefly forgot the name of Russell T. Davies and wanted to write "Russ Meyers". Now that would have been an interesting episode of Torchwood. Not because of the sex, which Torchwood seems to have way too much of, anyways, but because of the unabashed trash factor. Also, Tura Satana could have been the villain.