Firescape

I thought that the relationship between the son and the Dad at the beginning was pretty special. As the Dad stated, “…Son this really makes me proud.” Some father son relationships don’t have this same specialness. I thought the scene where they are telling him to abort was pretty interesting. The special effects were rather amazing. This also explains why he loses contact with the real world and the “Sci-Fi” portion of the episode. Once he did get into the other ship and I saw the blue character and the big hairy character, I was turned off. I like shows that could actually happen in real life or in the future. I still am not convinced that this would every happen.

The first thing that I noticed was that this started out on earth which is obviously different then STNG and the original star trek, but similar to Dollhouse and Buffy. I also noticed that they actually used a real life shuttle. I felt like the shuttle in STNG and the original star trek were more fiction then reality. I also thought that they fact that they still have contact with the real world as they are in space made more sense. I felt like the STNG and the original star trek they were basically out on their own with no contact to the real world. Some similarities, however, are the alien like figures that he encounters along the way. I thought that Dollhouse and Buffy were the best shows that we watched in the class and the others were rather painful to watch.

WB Post 5

Dear English 110 Students,

I just thought I would give you a few pointers to succeeding in this first year writing course. First off you need to come into the class with an open mind. When I first heard what our subject was, (Televised SciFi: A Modern Mythology) I thought it was going to be the longest quarter of my life. I honestly had zero interest in SciFi and thought that it was a bunch of BS. I am really interested in sporting articles and anything that has to do with sports. As the class went along, however, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Granted I still am not a very big fan of SciFi, but I did learn a lot about it.

Another thing that I would suggest is to not procrastinate. When we had to write a blog about an episode, I found it much easier to either write it as I watched the show or to write it immediately after class. They weren’t not only the easiest to write, but also the best blogs that I had. If I chose to wait until 11:30 to start writing them, I found myself forgetting what the episode was about.

Overall, I thought that this class was a lot of work but really easy. If you keep up with all of your assignments and don’t fall behind, you will be perfectly fine. I wish you good luck and hope you enjoy the class.

Sincerely,

English 110 AU 09 Student

STNG: “The Measure of a Man”

After watching this episode in class, I continued to ask myself which side of the argument that I stand on. I believe that they both have good points. I can see where the guy thought that he was merrily a machine and that if it was a “box with wheels” no one would have a problem. I tend to agree with him, but that is a completely different point. Data is not a box with wheels; he is more of a human. He obviously has feelings like humans do, and is just as intelligent. So ultimately, I think that the Captains argument makes more sense. Data shouldn’t have to be worked on if he does not want to, especially if the process isn’t a 100% success rate.

Comparing this episode to BSG and the original Star Trek:
I think that this episode is a lot like BSG and the original Star Trek in that they all take place in outer space. They all are more of the “Sci-Fi” shows that I am not really a big fan of. Although this episode wasn’t so bad because there wasn’t so much “fake” fighting and this could actually happen in real life. This episode was more about morality; Whether or not it is morally acceptable to work on Data or not. This is another reason why I was fairly interested in it. I actually wrote my ARP on the morality of Dollhouse, and as you can tell from my first paragraph, I don’t think that it is right to work on Data.

Star Trek

I also watch “Tomorrow is Yesterday” from the original Star Trek. It was quite painful to sit threw the entire episode, and I even had to skip forward a couple of times. I think that I got the main idea though and enough to write this blog. Basically one of the characters, Christopher tries to come back to earth, but he is accidentally transported back in time to 1969. When Captain Kirk tells Christopher that he cannot return because he knows too much, it made me think about the movie Déjà vu with Denzel Washington. Where they try to send a note back to the past to warn the police about the future. When Christopher takes the pictures of the Enterprise I thought to myself that it would be hard to convince anyone today that it really was a UFO. I think that we would just look at him like he is crazy. Which is another difference between SciFi and the real world. Thankfully though at the end of the episode the Enterprise is able to return back to present.

Besides the obviously differences of graphics and special effects between this old SciFi and modern SciFi, there are many other changes. For example in Dollhouse (the show that I watched for me ARP and CP papers) there is less about spaceships and universe and more about newer modern technology. I think that Dollhouse is actually possible one day, but I do not think that we will ever have "space wars." I no that BSG is a modern SciFi and has space wars, but BSG has a lot of things that are more related to us today. I think that SciFi is starting to move closer and closer to reality and possibility then they were in the original Star Trek. I think that this is good because that is the main reason that people are turned off from SciFi series.

Battlestar Galactica

So after watching this episode I was really confused what was all going on, since I have never seen Battlestar Galactica. So I figured that writing this blog would be kind of hard. But then I thought about just writing about some of the small things that happened during the episode. Such as when the girl snapped the baby head and kills the baby. It reminded me of abortion and how big of an issue that it is right now. Being from a small town this is an extremely touchy subject. Every year we have a bus that takes some students from our high school to Washington DC to march. I believe that abortion is wrong, but can be used to certain situations. One situation in which I think that abortion is acceptable is when a girl gets rapped. I believe that it isn’t the girls fault at all and if she doesn’t want to have the baby then she shouldn’t have to. BUT, I would strongly recommend her going threw with it and giving it up for adoption. All in all I believe that what the girl did in the episode is horrible. I try to put myself in her situation and think to myself “…is there any possible way that I could do what she did.” My answer was easy and simple, no. I could never bring myself to do what she did. I think that there is no reason in this world to kill anyone, let alone a baby. When I saw her do it, it made me sick to my stomach and made me feel sorry for anyone that has to have that on the conscience the rest of their life.

Poem

I decided to go for a fun poem rather than a serious one, basically because I have way more interest in them. I hated my senior English class because we had to write and interpret so many poems. I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out the serious ones and always just guessed on what they meant. So the poem that I picked was one that relates well with me. Whenever I write a paper I always rely on spell check to check my work, well this poem shows that maybe I shouldn’t rely on it as much as I do. Now I do think that spell check as gotten I little better then when the poem was first written because when I ran it through it did change some things. But the point of the poem was well taken.

A Little Poem Regarding Computer Spell Checkers...

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

Buffy

After watching the episode in class, I was somewhat confused. I can't decide what is real and what is fake. I really don’t know much about Buffy, other then what we have watched in class. I can only imagine what Buffy is going through right now. I don’t think I could kill my own friends just because someone tells me that the last six years of my life hasn’t been real. Trying to decipher reality from “dreams,” would be extremely difficult.

I though this episode was better then Hush. It kept me interested the entire time and I honestly didn't know what was going to happen. I started off thinking that the Mentle Instatution was fake, then moved toward it being real, and finally at the end thinking that it was fake again. Good episode to watch in class.