Eureka: What goes around comes Around

I haven’t loved the second half of this season of Eureka. It isn’t that it is bad in any way, it simply didn’t feel all that much like anything special was happening. In general the Episodes have simply become to predictable. The science changes but no matter what it is the odds are high that you won’t see it again and the next week there will be another scientific mystery.

As a season finally I didn’t expect them to change things all that much. At most you set up a change for next season in a finally and I am not convinced that they see the formula of this show as a problem the way that I do. But they did a couple things that I liked.

One of the major things that they were able to do was bring back on of the pieces of technology. There was no real need for the drones to make an appearance except that it was fun, and a hint that the writers recognize that at some point you might have to acknowledge the science you have shown them to have in past episodes.

The big change that I don’t know will happen next year or not is that of Zoe. She has been accepted into Harvard early and in some ways I think it might be good for her not to be on the show. She has been important to the show in some ways but once she grew out of the problem child role and became more of an adult she became less important. A reoccurring guest star role might simply be a better fit for that character now as well as shaking up a show that needs to be shaken up.

I will be watching Eureka next season but if I discover that it is simply more episodes that are the same episode with a new scientific problem I am likely to drop it to the bottom of my Tivo’s season pass manager.

Eureka: Insane in the P-Brain — review

In general the ideas of Eureka aren’t particularly groundbreaking, borrowed from other science fiction shows they get away with it because Eureka is a character based show with the science making the mysteries but not the plot of each show.

In this episode I suspect they got the idea from an old episode of Star Trek where Ensign Row and Geordie were out of phase. Though this time is is Carter and the new head of Section five, a woman who has been working at SETI. Wandering around unable to interact with anything they must solve the problem before Henry turns off the device and traps them there permanently.

Having Henry become almost the villain simply because of how good he is at figuring these things out was great and I think this new woman on the show who is brilliant but tends to get herself in trouble with the things she says should be fun.

I had considerably more problem with the B. Plot. In this story Lexi is struggling with whether she should tell the father of her babies if she is pregnant. The problem with this is that I don’t think there should be any debate. It doesn’t matter if he loves her or if it will tie him down or any of the other things. He deserves to know he has children, with the only possible exception if he is abusive(or Darth Vader). I simply have trouble feeling any connection to a character who struggles with this decision.

Overall, the thing that most excited me about this show was the ongoing storyline that is in the background. If don’t right this could be a fascinating new chapter in Eureka.

Warehouse 13: Magnetism — review

The third week of Warehouse 13 and it’s growing on me.  This episode did a better job of combining the humor and danger of the situation as well as showing how the writers are able to examine the characters better through the use of the artifacts in the show. In this episode it made people act on their subconcious desires.

Much of this episode dealt with the tension between the two investigators and while this was fine for a single episode I hope that the suggestion at the end of the episode that they may have dealt with this will prove mostly true. It isn’t that I want them to get along perfectly but it’s going to get old quick if they continue to fight all the time.

More interesting to me were the parts in the warehouse. The actor who plays their boss is entertaining and this is the ongoing part of the plot which is the part that most interests me. i hope that they have someplace interesting to go with it, some type of ongoing villian would be good, an enemy organization who wants to use these objects to control people.

Overall the episodic nature of this show is the least satisfying part to me and while I know that they aren’t likely to completly abandon that nor would I want them to, I just hope that they can find a way to combine episodic with a story that continues to grow, because by itself I just don’t care enough about the situations to see myself watching it for very long.

Scifi channel continues to distance itself from scifi

With only 8 out of the top 10 highest grossing films of 2008 being science fiction or fantasy films I can see why the only cable channel dedicated to that genre would want to distance themselves by changing their name from Scifi Channel to Syfy channel.

It is clear from the dismal failure of movies such as “The Dark Knight”, “Iron Man” and “Wall-E”  the entire concept of marketing to geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games has been decided against.

I think they are trying to hide the fact that they really do see their audience that way and i believe that it is time for the executives who are running this network to be replaced by people who really understand the audience.

What so many people out there seem to misunderstand is that the future of the world is computers, science and all of those other “geeky” things that science fiction fans are interested in.

So, my plan is to call a boycott on their most popular show. My suggestion is that starting next saturday everyone stop watching Battlestar Galactica.