Let me start off by saying that I was really excited for these past couple of Clone Wars episodes and have been looking forward to seeing them since August, when they revealed the existence of Savage Oppress at Celebration V. And don’t forget, I was really looking forward to seeing these episodes in theaters back in December. I’ll admit that I didn’t watch any of the other two episodes on tv, but I saw the first episode, Nightsisters, on CartoonNetwork.com before Friday’s episode. Since I hadn’t seen the other two, I wasn’t going to bother watching Witches of the Mist until I could somehow watch all three episodes together. (Spoilers ahead: watch out)

And then I was duped into watching the episode. The Rebel Legion’s Twitter account said “Don’t forget to catch Clone Wars tonight. Why? Two words. REPUBLIC. COMMANDOS.” And me, being the easily excited RC fan that I am made up my mind right away to watch the episode. Any episode that includes Republic Commandos must be a pretty badass episode. That’s when I went and watched the first episode online. I should have taken the hint when Cartoon Network only had the first episode and not the second, Monster. But I went ahead and watched the last episode of the trilogy on Friday night.

Where do I even begin? I guess I’ll start by explaining why I was ‘duped’ in to watching it. Well, that’s because my beloved Republic Commandos were only on screen for less than 10 seconds. I probably should have realized that they wouldn’t play a major role, but I really had hoped that my RC boys would have been more important players than just showing up on screen for a few seconds. I suppose most of my frustration with this episode stems from that. There’s no other word for it; I felt duped.

The other problem that I had with the episode is that everything happened too quickly. That might just be the fact that I missed the middle part of the story, but I’ve felt that way about a lot of Clone Wars episodes. 30 minutes minus commercials just isn’t enough time to get across a good Star Wars story. That’s not to say that the writers haven’t tried, though. There have been some pretty good episodes, and there are even more that I see what it’s about and think that it’s going to be a really fulfilling episode story-wise, but it then hits the problem that 30 minutes isn’t enough time to tell a full story. I feel like the formula of telling a story arc over two episodes (like with Rising Malevolence and Shadow of Malevolence) is a much better way to have good Clone Wars stories and I really wish they’d return to that formula.

I do think that Katie Lucas did a pretty darn good job for a first try with these episodes. The first episode held together well and made me want to continue the story into the next two episodes. My biggest problem, once I got past my Republic Commando disappointment, was that it seemed like the writers were trying too hard to take awesome aspects from the books and shove them into their cartoon series. Overall I thought the appearance of the Nightsisters wasn’t all that bad, and I was even pretty ok with Savage Oppress being Darth Maul’s brother. I was even ok with the Nightbrothers since they mostly seemed to keep the fact that they were really there to serve the Nightsisters, in holding with Dathomir’s female run society.

And that’s where we get to the part I’m really really really absolutely not ok with. I can take a lot of bending and reshaping of the Star Wars universe, but there’s a place I draw the line at, and that’s bringing back characters who have been very obviously been sliced into two separate parts by a lightsaber. And that line stands no matter how much I love Ray Park and think it would be cool to see him as Darth Maul again. The fact that Mother Tavlin or whatever-the-hell-her-name-was gave Savage a pendant and told him to go to the Outer Rim and search out his kin who can teach him the ways of the Sith is so totally not ok with me. That takes the bending and reshaping of the Expanded Universe and completely and utterly shatters it with no regard for the fans who are left crushed and once again picking up the pieces of a fragmented universe. I can only hope that the crazy Russian accented Nightsister leader was really just setting Savage up to fall into some black hole at the edge of the galaxy and never return since he has ceased to be useful to them. I hope.

But that hope simply is just stemming from a Star Wars fan who has had to pick up the fractured pieces of the Star Wars universe and lovingly fit them back together to await George’s (or in this case his daughter’s) next universe shattering decision.

Katie has obviously learned much from her father.

It did.

After reaquainting myself with the controls I set out with my trusty guide to beat Gears of War 2. I decided on playing on the easiest difficulty since I have no interest in paying Microsoft an extra $10 a month to play online so I didn’t care if I got to be any good or not. I just wanted to play through the story. Which I managed in about three days last summer. I found that once I got into the swing of the game I only used the guide when I had died a few times and wanted suggestions on how to do something differently, or when I got lost and needed to remember where to go and what to do. Once I beat the game I decided I could safely go and read the books. I have yet to bother getting my hands on the first game. Since I’ve only just started on the books I’m not sure whether I’ll regret that decision or not.

I’m starting with Aspho Fields which, as far as I can tell, takes place after the first game but before the second game. If I’m wrong on that someone feel free to correct me. But if I’m right it’s cool with me, I haven’t hit anything from the first game that I should know about that is hindering my reading. So far the book has held to what I’m used to from Karen Traviss. Nitty gritty ugly war stuff that, unless you’ve been in war or know someone who has, you might not think of. Lack of supplies, lack of food, hostile environments and what’s it’s like to rely 100% on the person next to you to watch your back and keep you alive. She makes it seem terrifying and yet sometimes I feel as though she would be one hell of a military recruiter. Not to mention how real she makes the characters. They all have their fears, their worries and especially in the case of Dom, their hopes and dreams.

As I finish the book and make my way on to the other ones (which are fortunately available at my library now) I’ll continue to share my thoughts on the books, and I’ll try not to drool over Karen Traviss’ writing too much.

I’ll admit that it took me a little while to switch gears (no pun intended Gearsheads) from Star Wars to be able to understand the new world Karen Traviss was creating in the first Wess’har book, City of Pearl. Since this is my first real sci-fi novel it took me a few chapters to get into the story, and I had a number of times where I would start the first two chapters, put the book down and then not go near it again for days or weeks. Then after reading them for at least the third time, something clicked and I had a better handle on what world (or worlds) this  story was set in, and from then on I was able to more easily go through it.

As usual Karen Traviss does a great job of presenting a wide variety of characters, both alien and human. Her aliens at times really are exactly that- alien in the sense that it is difficult to understand where they are coming from and other times you sympathize more with the aliens than with the humans. In this world humans are even more messed up than they are in our known time stream, and even though they often seem more extreme it doesn’t seem like her humans on Earth are that far off from what we are already becoming. It’s a disturbing thing to think about and yet makes for a great anchor in the story. What better way to remind readers that not only is her story taking place in the future but to be careful of how things change in our real world than to present scenarios that are actually plausible?

One of the other ‘scary’ things about her books that I actually really love is how when the humans start doing typical human things like murder, being selfish or greedy it’s easy to sit there reading and think “yes, that’s exactly how humans are” and then feel ashamed about it. Don’t read this series if you’re looking for a reason to enjoy being a human. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are humans in her stories that are admirable and brave and all the good qualities that we like in our heroes, but the majority of humans are greedy, selfish, thoughtless and stupid. Maybe that’s the cop and criminal justice part of me speaking, but any time in the stories one of the aliens floats the idea of just vaping all the humans in the area to send a message, a big part of me thinks that it’s the best idea for them. That’s not to say that I advocate human genocide, but reading her books makes me think that aliens worlds and even some of the creatures on our world that are endangered or extinct because of humans wouldn’t be better off if we were to not be around anymore.

On a cheerier note, one of the fun things that I enjoyed about reading the first book, City of Pearl, was that the humans on the ship that traveled to the alien world seemed to split into two groups the way high school kids separate into the cool kids and the not cool kids. Except on their ship they split into the military personnel and the scientists. The leader of the military personnel, Shan Frankland, was an ex-cop on Earth and retained all of her police training especially when dealing with the military personnel. The scientists all kept to themselves because they felt persecuted by the military people because they didn’t understand their need to go and research things on the planet and collect samples learn as much as possible about the planet while they were there. The reason I liked this dynamic so much was because I could whole-heartedly sympathize with both sides. Being a former biochemistry major I knew exactly how the scientists felt and the way they viewed their visit to the alien planet. And yet because I’m now a criminal justice major intent on becoming a police officer, I knew exactly how Shan Frankland and her military people felt about being on the planet. It all came down to safety and logistics with them and they couldn’t understand why the scientists felt they needed to go out and collect samples even at the cost of their own safety. The fact that she can balance so realistically those two aspects in her book is just another reason why I love Karen Traviss’ writing.

Anyway, that’s about all I have for now, and hopefully the third book will come in to the library soon. I resorted to reading the first few pages on Amazon.com using their Look Inside feature. It wasn’t as satisfying as being able to read the whole book whenever I want…

Conversely, you’ve spent time in Vermont or any place north of LI: the same dark, dangerous or creepy area is considered ‘sketchy’.

So one of my friends invited me to go see Iron Man 2 with her and a group of her friends at midnight. Now, I am not a big Iron Man fan, actually, the fact that the person who I’m supposed to call ‘dad’ just about worships Tony Stark is enough to set me off from it; but I try to be objective and I think I manage a fairly decent job since I know next to nothing about Iron Man from the comics and actually really enjoyed The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and the aforementioned ‘dad’ person did not.

Anyway, back to the movie part. I entered the theater with a fairly open mind because when I saw the first Iron Man movie I had such low expectations for it that I actually enjoyed it. I thought, “Self, maybe Iron Man 2 might be the same. Shell out the $11 that you could use towards a sonic screwdriver and go have fun with your friends. Maybe it will surprise you”.

It didn’t.

Somehow, it actually managed to be below my expectations. Let me present a quick digression: when I went to see The Bourne Identity in theaters I couldn’t stand the movie so much that I longed to fall asleep. I closed my eyes for 20 minutes at a time praying for sleep, but it did not come. That has not happened to me during a movie since. Until Iron Man 2.

It started out promising by presenting an interesting conundrum for narcissistic self-proclaimed superhero Tony Stark; his palladium heart is killing him. (a little strange considering the actual helpful things that palladium really does, but I can go with it; this is Marvel after all) The trouble is, Tony can’t figure out a way to cure himself. This is significant because the next hour and forty five minutes will be spent watching Tony struggle with this issue, with one really disappointing fight scene stuck in to keep 99% of the audience happy, and a rather strange digression in the plot meant to introduce Marvel’s next movie The Avengers.

First let me tackle the fight scene. It started out promising, with Iron Man’s new nemesis making a random appearance at the racetrack that Tony is at, having commandeered the race car from the real driver so that Tony can race it, presumably because he thinks he’s dying and it’s one of those things on his Bucket List. Anyway, Vanko stomps out onto the racetrack and starts using his rather fancy light whip things to start causing havoc to get Tony’s attention. After nearly getting himself sliced in half, Pepper shows up with his portable Iron Man suit. (now, if the suit fits in that over-sized briefcase, how come he has to go through the whole fan fair of standing around having that machine take it off for him?) Now he’s ready for battle! Vanko lassos him a couple times with his light whips and then suddenly Tony throws him into the ground and just like that, the fight is over. As it should be since Vanko had almost no armor and if he’d gotten slammed into the ground any harder they’d be scraping him off the racetrack. If the whole scene lasted 2 minutes I’d be very surprised.

That was about a half hour into the movie after Jon Favreau made us sit through the most annoying Senate meeting ever about what to do with Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit. Then we have to wait another hour and fifteen minutes for Iron Man’s next encounter with Vanko. Problematic? I think so.

If you’re wondering, what happened in those rather painful and dull 75 minutes was as follows: Samuel L. Jackson (eye patch and all) as Nick Fury approaches Tony Stark about the S.H.I.E.L.D. program. Enter the prolonged process of introducing viewers to The Avengers which is not scheduled until 2012. (here’s hoping the Mayans are spot on and we get spared the likely train wreck that movie will be if the past few Marvel movies are any indication) Also, thanks to some very strange phenomenon with Harold Stark and an old recording, Tony realizes his father left him a way to solve his palladium issue. (anyone else confused as to how 30 years in the past the father knew exactly what his son would need? Anyone else feel like it was a bit of a grandfather paradox?)

And finally we are able to move on with what little plot this movie had. Vanko makes his next big appearance at the Stark Expo, via idiot Justin Hammer and his desire to one-up Iron Man and make a cooler better suit. Blah blah, chase ensues, lots of explosions and things start to look up for the last few minutes of the movie. And then suddenly Tony Stark realizes that Vanko has a backup plan and he has to race back across New York to get back to save Lois Lane from the exploding drones. Oops, sorry, wrong movie. It’s just that Iron Man flying at Mach speeds did so remind me of Superman flying backwards around the world as fast as he could to go back in time so he could bring Lois back from the dead.

My biggest problem with that scene? Not the throwback to Superman, who is as we all know a DC comic (boo, hiss!) but the fact that Pepper stands around staring at the drone for about thirty seconds while it beeps and its chest flashes red at her. She must not have gotten the memo that in action movies when things beep and flash red it usually means they are going to explode. Fortunately for her Tony arrives just in time and he grabs her and they blast off to safety. Here enters my problem: 0mph-100000000mph in .2 seconds= flattened Pepper. Whoops, better luck next time, Mr. Stark!

So now that Vanko is vanquished, that leaves Nick Fury and his eye patch free to go try to recruit Iron Man for his new team. Only I was just as confused as Tony Stark was. They want Iron Man for the team, but they don’t want Tony Stark? That’s like saying “thanks, I’ll take the Hulk, but Bruce Banner get lost” or “come on in, Mr. Hyde, but make sure you leave Dr. Jekyll at home!” Not that I particularly blame them. Tony Stark is really not my kind of superhero.

That just leaves the small clip at the end of the movie.

What, you thought I was going to spoil that too? No, that you can go see for yourself (it’s probably already up on youtube somewhere if you’re really desperate) and would require a whole other rant on my part that frankly I’m just too tired to type up.

Overall, my feeling was that this movie was really just one big promo for The Avengers, kind of like those episodes of CSI that introduced the other CSI shows, or the episode of NCIS to introduce NCIS: Los Angeles. Slightly entertaining but overall pretty useless.

Here’s my verdict: on a scale of one to ten, with ten being X-Men 2, and one being The Hulk, and five being The Fantastic Four, I give Iron Man 2 just that: a two.

See, my biggest problem is that I started watching Doctor Who when David Tennent was travelling with Donna Noble. So I got attached to the 10th Doctor! Plus Donna Noble was my favorite of his new companions, but that’s beside the point. I loved everything about the 10th Doctor. He always seemed like he had just taken a fistful of amphetamines and if he didn’t run everywhere and talk a million-words-a-minute he’d explode or something. It gave all his adventures that edge, because it seemed that if you didn’t run with him or your heart wasn’t racing just sitting and watching him run to save the world then you were going to miss something! So far Matt Smith is much calmer and, well… it loses a bit of that adrenaline rush I got addicted to when I first started watching.

Plus, I’m still adjusting and everything, but, the 11th Doctor… well, I think he’s a bit of a jerk. So far he’s made snap decisions about how much he likes his new companion, and he’s abandoned her to her own defenses in two different time frames. It seems a bit unfair to her. Don’t get me wrong, Amy Pond is quite capable of handling herself and she’s proven to be a quick learner, but she’s still learning about how he works and how things go on around him. They just don’t seem to be meshing together yet. Not like the 10th and Donna, who complimented each other perfectly. Even before she was Doctor Donna she was helping him make decisions.

I guess I’m still just adjusting to this new Doctor. Maybe it would help if I got one of these: http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/collectibles/d7d8/

Or maybe this one: http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/giftsunder20/8cff/

Instead I’ve got to save my money for Celebration V. Decisions, decisions…

Another thing that just occurred to me, not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, but these episodes seem VERY Star Wars homage-y. I mean, epic space battle to blow something up (that looked suspiciously like the second Death Star’s reactor core), and the obvious Star Wars line:  ”Help us, Doctor. You’re our only hope.”

The episode is almost over, and I still can’t decide how I feel about Matt Smith as the Doctor. I will just have to watch again next week to see!

“Kal’buir,” Jusik said, “have you got room for another son?”

Skirata looked baffled for a few seconds, then smiled and held out his hand to grasp Jusik’s arm, Mando-style, hand to elbow. “Ni kry’tayl gai sa’ad, Bard’ika. I recognize you as my child.”

Mandalorian adoption was fast and permanent, a few words to recognize someone as child and heir regardless of their age. Given the emotional weight behind it, the oath seemed almost inadequate.

“Buir,” Jusik said. Father. Everyone called Skirata Kal’buir, a mark of affectionate respect, but the word was now changed forever for Jusik, because it was suddenly real and literal. He was finally someone’s son; someone with a name, someone he knew and cared about. For a man with no past, that sudden sense of completion was heady and unexpected.

- Republic Commando: 501st

Karen Traviss

I took this directly from the last Republic Commando book because it was one of the scenes from it that will stay with me forever. It’s just another scene that shows how important fathers are in general, but even more so to Mandalorians. It’s the reason why Kal Skirata is my favorite Mandalorian.

I hope it doesn’t cheapen the impact of this post, but for anyone out there who wants to talk about Mandalorians, check out and join this message board: http://mandoade.proboards.com

I used the term Mando’ade because it means Children of Mandalore in the Mandalorian language, Mando’a.

Anyway, back to how much tv I watch. Let me give you the run down; right now of the shows that I watch when they air my week goes like this:

Monday: 24 and Castle

Tuesday: NCIS, Lost, and V

Wednesday: Criminal Minds (assuming I get back from class in time) and Law and Order: SVU

Thursday: Flashforward and CSI

There are other shows that are currently filming and won’t return for a few months that I also watch when they air, assuming they don’t conflict with a show I like better: Burn Notice, White Collar, and Dollhouse before it ended.

Now, here’s the shows that I also watch but I catch online somehow whether it be the next day, in re-runs or after an entire season is over and it’s on Netflix:

House, CSI: NY, In Plain Sight, Doctor Who, Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Law and Order, CSI: Miami and Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

Whew, I’m tired just listing all of them! Basically, my point is I watch a LOT of tv. Something should be done about the number of hours in a day, because it’s hard to keep up! And USA certainly doesn’t help with the number of good shows it suddenly seems to have. And CBS as well (when they actually AIR the shows on schedule: see previous whining). Oh, and there’s also ABC’s contribution. And Fox’s. Though both those stations are rapidly ditching some of their best shows. RIP Lost and 24.

Anyway, that’s about it for my tv watching. There’s a lot of it.