NYTimes: “Lawyers for the Alaska Native coastal village of Kivalina, which is being forced to relocate because of flooding caused by the changing Arctic climate, filed suit in federal court here Tuesday arguing that 5 oil companies, 14 electric utilities and the country’s largest coal company were responsible for the village’s woes.”

Maybe this is what it will take to get countries to do something radical about it.

We were discussing over dinner with JBQ about James Morrison, the actor who plays Lt. Col. McQueen on S:AAB, and Bill Buchanan on “24″.

Eugenia: I love his characters, but the actor himself is not my type at all… he writes poems, is a yoga instructor and a vegan. I can’t identify myself with any of that.
JBQ: Actor and a vegan?
Eugenia: Yes, why?
JBQ: Film is made out of [animal] gelatin.
(loud laughs)

Finished watching both “Earth 2” (IMDb rating: 7.0/10) and “Space: Above and Beyond” (IMDb rating: 8.1/10). I was watching the latter on the Greek TV in the ’90s, but the first one never broadcasted in Greece as far as I know. So I Netflix’ed both and [re-]watched them as I am such a sci-fi sucker (if you want to torture me, you can always force me to watch a medical/drama). So, as you can see that S:AAB has a higher rating compared to “Earth 2″. Usually, I trust IMDb’s ratings. But I won’t agree this time. In my opinion, “Earth 2″ is superior to S:AAB.

“Earth 2″ has elements that show that its writers had a pretty objective view of the future: a totalitarian government, chips implanted to people without their knowledge, an almost uninhabitable original planet Earth, non-humanoid aliens that are different enough from humans to be interesting, genetically engineered people pre-destined to follow certain professions, long interstellar travels that required cold sleep, the fact that in order to survive a colonization of a planet the humans must be genetically modified, while other humans were modified to become cyborgs. It’s all there. It’s true sci-fi, but with enough future reality dosage in it. So from the writing point of view, “Earth 2″ was great (and it would be greater if they dropped the parapsychology-driven episodes). Where it lacked was in the actual realization of the writer’s vision. It seems that the rest of the crew did not get it, and gave us some constipated-looking aliens, cheap directing in addition to bad broadcasting times that drove ratings down.

S:AAB suffers from the exact opposite problem. Better directing, more expensive sets, “Starship Troopers”-like battles, a “Wing Commander”-like universe (the show was obviously inspired by the video game), computer generated sequences that were a first for TV at the time. And at the same time, writing sucked big time. Stupid dialogs (don’t you hate it when characters start explaining shit like we are 5 year olds?), idiotic characters, aliens that seem to share similar values with us and yet don’t sit their ass down to discuss a treaty. While the Sillicate AI story is somewhat believable (although the show is set awfully too close in 2063), the InVitro story is not: it’s cheaper to employ soldiers than to gestate them and pay for their growth and education. The fact that only 6-7 characters were recurring, shows how shallow the show was. If it wasn’t for the super-hot James Morrison as the Lt. Col. “T.C.” McQueen, I would have been sleeping in the couch in no time.

Truth is, there were things that really bothered me in S:AAB. No matter how sexy McQueen was, when he was talking how much “hope” the Hiroshima bomb gave to people and he wanted to do the same, I just wanted to blow his brains out. Or how greatly he talked about the Vietnam war: the guy is a maniac, and yet his character was meant as a father figure. The show felt like a US Army propaganda at times. Or when Lt Wang said something about the ancient Greek God called “Cer”, a God that does not exist (what did the writers were smoking?). Or that episode where the marines were stranded in space and they *heard* the alien fighters closing in (WHAT)? What really bothered me was that episode called “Who Monitors the Birds?”. For the S:AAB fans, this is one of their favorite episodes ever. To me, it was freaking incomprehensible. Alien soldiers exchanging tokens? And that vision (or was it an alien?) “The Whore of Death”, a concept taken (unfortunately, literally) from the William Manchester’s “Goodbye, Darkness” book. I mean, if you had never read that book, you can’t help thinking that the writers went mad. What a waste. No wonder it got canceled.