Alphabetical list

11 October 2008 - I finally have a TV show worth writing about. It is simply called "Sanctuary". It is broadcast on the SciFi channel at 8 pm on Friday night. It stars Amanda Tapping, Carter from Stargate SG-1. It features all of these horror characters that you find in the movies I hate but Dr. Magnus (Tapping) rescues them and places them in a sanctuary. This converts what would have been a horror movie into something that I can deal with. Where a horror movies has all of these non-rational moments, Sanctuary converts the non-rational moment(s) into something you have to allow to happen, which I compare to allowing for the stargate or warp drives, and then rationalizes the rest. I can deal with this and I don't even have to get up and walk around because I let a TV show or movie get to me.

I have an HD TV setup and I don't watch the local channels unless someone tells me that something I follow such as volcanoes or earthquakes are being discussed and then, I follow the local news. There aren't any primetime TV shows that I can tolerate. I can visit some friends and there are a few that I can watch on their TV set but I can't watch them at home. Most of the ones I watch at my friends house are broadcast in Spanish and I can get an interesting part translated.

I am DVRing a few shows from DISH such as "Top Gear" on BBCA. One thing I have never done is redline a really fast car in the "top gear". I had a Camaro that was capable of redlining in the top gear but I just never pushed it that fast. I came close a number of times but that fastest I ever went was around 500 rpm from the redline. I was satisfied to do around 140-145 mph on the speedometer. So, watching 3 idiots doing things that I have dreamed of doing such as screaming through a turn burning rubber and going sideways is really enjoyable. I have done that on a gocart and ended up with two lines of pealed off rubber on the back of a white shirt.

I also DVR a number of shows produced by discovery.com. I really hate watching psuedo documentaries by the Discovery Channel. They take a 25-30 minute show and convert it into an hour long show. They do this by repeating segments and taking comments from people out of context. It is really easy to prove a point when you take comments out of context. That isn't following the scientific method of proof. However, all irritations aside, they do end up covering topics that I find interesting and I am trapped into watching them.

29 October 2007 - I have found a TV show that is interesting to me. It is "The Unit". Because of the time and station, I can't watch it and I also can't record it. So, I have been buying the previous season and that lets me watch it. These DVDs also don't have advertising.

4 August 2007 - I finally found a copy of Stargate SG-1 season 10 & 9. I tried to watch the final season and gave up. Then, I watched "Unending", the final show and ended up being disatisfied. The saving the galaxy bit was really kind of cheesy. At least Earth ended up with weapons that it could use to fight the "Orai". They just had to survive long enough to get the tools ready for other ships.

20 June 2007 - Things haven't changed in the 2006-2007 tv-season. However, what did change is Alborada on Univision. Alborada is a telenovela or Mexican soap opera. I was suddenly much more interested in the telenovelas. Right now, I am recording "Destilando Amor", "La Fea Más Bella", and "Duelo de Pasiones". I tend to like the ones taking place in an older Mexico.

28 June 2006 - I did not find a single primetime series on commercial TV interesting during the 2005-2006 season. The local stations could have gone digital and stopped broadcasting analog signals and I would not have noticed.

The Unit caught my attention but it was at a really bad time for me. My DVR is setup to record "La fea más bella" and "Barrera de amor" on Univision and it will not turn off or turn on the satelite receiver. So, I couldn´t record it and watch it at a better time. You can find out about the plots of the telenovelas on EsMas.com.

Now that Jag has gone off of the air, I was hunting for someone that was action oriented like Mac (Catherine Bell) was on Jag. I started watching TNT's Wanted and there was Rashida Jones. The only fan page is called rashidaonline. It didn´t take long for TNT to cancel Wanted.

JAG

Just in case you haven't followed it. They cancelled Jag at the end of the 2004-2005 season. I basically quit watching Jag when it came into serious competition with Stargate SG-1 on Friday night. I give up a lot of things to watch SG-1 and it should not be a surprise on which show won the who I watch contest.

I really only have one prime time network TV show that I watch and that is JAG. It is usually broadcast on the local CBS TV station at 8 pm on Tuesday. There are times when they don't know where they are. For example, in the Navy Hardware section on their web page they have the USS Nimitz (Note: I used to have a URL here but they have so many errors on their web page that I was embarrassed to forward anyone) based in Bremerton, WV. Ask anyone from Washington State where Bremerton is located and they can tell you where you have to get on the ferry boat to get there. Bremerton is located on the eastern edge of the Olympic Peninsula and is almost straight west of Seattle. It used to be the home of the Battleship USS Missouri. You can probably cut them some slack because neither place is correct. The Nimitz finished getting its 30 year overhaul and is back on station and based in San Diego, California. In the history section of the Nimitz's web page, they talk about the home port being Bremerton, Washington. I first encountered the Nimitz in a movie called "Final Countdown". In the movie, they pass through a storm that looks straight out of the movie the "Black Hole". It is a little bit of Hollywood writer's trying to understand something physical and over doing it. You just have to ignore it. The storm passes and suddenly they have passed back in time to December 6, 1941. The satellite links are down and there is only some HF radio. You have to imagine a more PC environment suddenly encountering Jack Benny and Rochester. You could see a common military expression on the faces of the sailor's :). There are a couple of scenes where F-14's in a tight turn pull sufficient g's to create enough of a vacuum above the wings to flash the water vapor into fog. I liked the movie just to watch the Tomcat's fly.

JAG is mil_speak for the Judge Advocate Generals office, which is the justice arm of the Navy. Their interest is "truth" comes first. The primary player's that I watch are Mac (a Marine Corp. Lt. Col. played by Catherine Bell) and Harm (a Navy Lt. Cmdr. played by David James Elliott). You can visit Catherine's web site and see why I think she is an incredibly beautiful lady. Make sure you use Microsoft's Internet Explorer otherwise there are 95% spots where you can't see the last 5% of a scrolled section. There is a lot of body language that goes on between these two. They admit that it has added to the number of people watching the show. They also joke about him being the "brains" and she is the "brawn". That isn't too far off because she has been kick boxing for 10 years and like to drive fast motorcycles. I haven't seen a big, fast motorcycle that will not go faster in a blink of the eye than I ever drove in the Camaro. I tell people that it accelerated through 125 mph (200 kph) faster than my Pontiac Fiero went through 20 mph in first gear.

Getting back to Mac and Harm, for a long time they were not personally involved but they easily could be. She is doing a dance around him so he doesn't get that close. In a recent show, she spaced out and admitted to the new African American actor that she was in love with Harm. She got this "Oh my God!" look on her face and made him promise to not tell anyone.

The closing show for the first season I watched had Harm getting his night vision back, which had forced him to chose something besides flying a Tomcat. Now he is at a decision point because all he ever wanted to do is be a fighter pilot and now he can see at night. I would really lose interest in the show if either Harm or Mac left. They have gotten into and out of trouble in most civilized countries from America to Russia. They go overboard at times because Harm, who can't read or speak Russian, gets into a Mig-29 and steals it. He ends up being a hero because they stop a bad guy from selling special Russian missile war heads to other bad guys. The middle east is the only place where being physically there was dangerous. The variety of the problems they deal with keeps the show interesting. Even watching reruns is interesting.

A recent show (20 February 2001) has Harm being approached by Alex, the Russian Officer, that helped him track down his step-brother. Alex is trying to find out what we know about the Russian submarine that exploded and sank, losing approximately 110 lives. The story ends up with Mac on one of the US fast attacks trailing a Russian submarine. Harm just happens to be on the sub. They are giving the US and British a tour of their current submarines. For a demonstration, the Russian Skipper is going to fire the new rocket powered torpedo. Harm, in a classified briefing, was told that the sub Murmansk had fired on at a target but just before it got there, it turned and headed for the Murmansk. When it hit and exploded, the Murmansk was sunk. They argue with the Russian skipper but he is insistant on firing the torpedo. Then, science fiction gets into the act, and the US sonar operator tells the US skipper about the conversation on the Russian sub. The American skipper makes a noise and tells the Russian skipper over a sonar phone that the rocket torpedo had sank the Murmansk. He doesn't believe him. The American Skipper tells him that he was there, in the Murmansk's baffles when it fired the torpedo and was sunk, which he doesn't believe. Mac gets on the sonar phone and mentions something on of the Officers says to the Russian skipper. The Russian skipper want to know how she knows and Mac can't tell him that they are listening to the conversation. So, Mac tells him that the Russian subs have all been bugged for many years and the American subs can all listen in to the conversations in the control room.

The arguments are to no avail and the Russian skipper fires the torpedo, which heads for the target. The American skipper goes to full power and starts to turn away. When he is off to the side, he fires a noise maker, which the Russian skipper thinks is a torpedo fired at him. Harm convinces him that if he had wanted to do that, he would have done it without letting them know they were there. When the rocket torpedo is almost to the target it turns and heads back to the Russian sub at close to 200 mph. When it is almost there, it veers towards the loud noise maker the American sub had fired and when it is close, it explodes and leaves both subs with sparks flying but still intact. It was one of the better Jag shows. If you are into Techo-Thrillers like I am, it had drama, suspense, and results, i.e., technology won the day. Everyone survived but you can imagine the Russians tearing apart their subs looking for the non-existant bug. It would be sort of getting even for bugging the new consulate building in Moscow as they were building it many, many years ago.

The part about Techo-Thrillers is they take something that exists and then add fiction to its capabilities. In this case, the Russian torpedo exists. Did it sink the Murmansk? I don't have any idea but the concept makes for an interesting exchange between two very competitive skippers. Can we listen into to conversations on the Russian subs? I doubt it but it was something that made the show interesting. In the end, both sides had a technology advantage that resulted in the suspense and eventually saved people. It is some what like Tom Clancy thrillers. The USSR used to be the enemy but human elements were present. In the Cardinal of the Kremlin, the head of the KGB could have shot Ryan. He had a pistol to his head but let him go. In the latest story, Clancy has China invading Russia and it is President Ryan sending US Armor to help Russia. The circle is complete because it is the head of the KGB that could have shot Ryan who is the Russian President that is now being helped by Ryan.

Let see, JAG, Final Countdown, and Top Gun all involve F-14's, hmmm. :-). The only plane I think is more special is the SR-71 and it can't turn that tight. We used to have sonic booms locally that our local newspaper reported as being caused by supersonic over flights by SR-71's on training missions. They would start turning at Mach 2-3+ in Oregon and would finish the turn over Montana. The long turn radius is sort of one of those who cares things. The F-14 pilot would feel like the "Mitsubishi A6M" pilots in Final Countdown. The F-14 wouldn't really see one pulling up on them and once it passed them, they couldn't catch it unless it was cooling off to land. The F-22 is lurking and will replace the F-14 as the coolest fighter in my mind. Supersonic flight without using an afterburner is a technology jump in the F-22.

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Stargate SG-1

My current, watch every new episode show is SciFi's, "Stargate SG-1". It is on the SciFi satelite on Friday night. They have finished season 8 and the rest of my comments are seriously out of date.

They have started running back to back episodes. The first show is this season and the second show seems to be from last season. It also just happens that DirecTV has an Eastern version and a Western version. I can watch them twice. One of the episodes for 1999-2000 was called "A Hundred Days". It hit my best show yet meter. They found a planet with the mineral used in the Stargate's While they were there, they went out on a hill to watch the "fire rain", which turns out to be an asteroid belt that is just about to drop car sized boulders on the planet. They send some of the people through the Stargate and find one of the lead characters boy and his girl friend are missing. Jack and the mother race to find them and are in a cave when an asteroid strikes, burying the Stargate. The rest of the show is spent with Jack coping with being stranded. He thinks it is forever but the SG-1 team knows that the Stargate is still functional and are trying to rescue him. The 100 days from the title is the time required to figure out how to make it back through the Stargate.

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Battlestar Galactica

There are three versions of Battlestar Galactica. They start with "Classic", mini-series, and then, you have SciFi's Battlestar Galactica. I have the DVD's from the classic but they were filmed a "long time ago". When I watch the older episodes, it strikes me to how far we have come with computer generated imaging. The women were not warriors and Starbuck was being run by his second head. You had the greatest voice of all time, Lorne Green, playing commander Adama.

Now, you have a woman playing Starbuck and commander Adama is James Olmos. Olmos doesn't have Green's voice but he is also playing a much grittier Adama. I am not sure Green would fit the part. Starbuck is played by Katee Sackhoff. She is the hottest pilot in our space and is not afraid of getting physical. So, times and attitudes have changed and BSG has changed with it. You have much more interesting action because of the ability to use CGI. You only have to watch a missle attack and realize that 100's of incoming could not be dealt with by the old production system.

I bought a DVR just in time to record the last three shows. I used to use SVHS to tape shows of interest but the DVR is much better. The video comes from the satelite receiver using s-video and if there is a surround sound, I will hear it.

Some people are turned off because of the sex. I think people in combat use sex to keep something normal in their life.

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Dark Angel

Dark Angel was an almost never miss show the first season. I wasn't quite so fussy the second year. Now that the first year is on DVD, I am watching it all over again. I think DA was the really first TV show about a really cute, kick-ass person. The show Firefly also has a kick-ass woman star. You never know about show pr but the claim I remember is that Alba studied martial arts for 4 hours a week and she also spent the same amount of time learning to ride her big motorcycle.

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Anchor

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