TV – JAR of Geek

Podcasts – Conversations on Demand

How many times have you sat around with friends and just talked about random things? Like gone over all the trivia of a favorite TV show or movie, reviewed a new movie, or talked about current news events in either a funny or serious way. But what do you do when you don’t have many friends to hang around with like that?

In those cases, there are podcasts, shows where people discuss whatever they want to focus on. There are podcasts on almost any topic you can think of. Ones I listen to are on TV shows, atheism, current events, entertainment, sexuality, and relationships.

In this post I’ll mention the podcasts I listen to that discuss TV Shows.

The Babylon Project Podcast
babylonprojectpodcast.wordpress.com
On this podcast, Raul Ybarra and Jim Arrowood are doing a re-watch of one of my favorite TV shows of all time, Babylon 5. Episode by episode, they discuss the episode, all the actors, the story, how the plot fits into the overall story of the series. I’ve enjoyed listening to their analyses, especially when they get on a military expert friend. I understand they plan to move on to the movies and Crusade after. I’ve paused my re-watch of this series until the podcast episodes catch up. This one started as basically a takeover of another podcast, the “Sci-Fi Cafe” I think it was. Then Raul and Jim started their own show. One of the funnier things is when they start going down various rabbit holes, then get back on track with “This isn’t the x podcast.”

Highlander Rewatched
soundcloud.com/highlander-rewatched
In this one, the podcasters are going through the Highlander series. The people on the show call themselves “Rewatchers”, a great pun on the Watcher organization from the show. They are also talking about going on to the movies (at least 4 and 5) and I expect they will go to Raven, too. I’ve been meaning to do a rewatch of the series, especially since it is one I’ve never really finished it. As soon as I get caught up in the episodes, I’ll do my rewatch at the same pace.

Synthaholics
synthaholics.com
This podcast is hosted by David Duncan, Aaron O’Brien, Fayth Hertzberg, and often Guy Davis. They discuss anything that has to do with Star Trek, from favorite or worst episodes, dream crews, sexuality, the new movies and the new series, web series, and the Axanar controversy. I like how the show isn’t an echo chamber of everything Star Trek is automatically good. They have diverse opinions on all things Trek and geek in general. I recently sent an email suggesting they do an episode on the Star Trek TNG/Doctor Who crossover comic mini-series. They said they’d look into it. Yay!

The West Wing Weekly
thewestwingweekly.com
This podcast is hosted by Joshua Malina (one of the show’s later stars) and Hrishikesh Hirway. They are also performing a re-watch of the series, The West Wing, another on my list of most favorite TV shows ever. They discuss each episode, and have often had other stars or past administration members on the show. I’m pausing my rewatch of this series until the podcast catches up. I’m looking forward to their discussions on many episodes later in the show’s run.

“Sanctuary”

This week I’ve been watching season 1 of a great Sci-Fi show called “Sanctuary”. This was another show about the hidden creatures, called Abnormals, that live among humans, and the Sanctuary network is a private research group tasked with studying and protecting these abnormals from humans and from themselves if necessary.

The Sanctuary was created by Dr. Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping), a brilliant biologist who runs the location featured in the show. She is helped by her gun-hand daughter Ashley (Emilie Ullerup), tech-savvy Henry Foss (Ryan Robbins), and a Bigfoot (Christopher Heyerdahl). In the first episodes, they add in Dr. Will Zimmerman (Robin Dunne), a profiler who tends to see more than most people are comfortable with.

Some things that I really like about “Sanctuary” is that abnormals are just as diverse in temperament and regular humans. Some are benign and just want to live their lives, and some are malevolent and just want to eat your face. They also weave some interesting season-long mystery among a character-driven story.

Technically, the show is interesting because most of the sets and locations seen on the screen don’t really exist. The actors were on green-screen stages and the only things that existed were objects they had to touch like a door or a bookshelf.

It’s a great show that I obviously highly recommend if you can find where to watch it. If I had thought enough in advance, I would have made this my first episode review posts. Maybe I still will.

New Star Trek Coming

I’m excited about the new Star Trek series coming next year. For those who don’t know, CBS announced a new Star Trek series to start in January 2017. It will be on their All Access streaming service. (http://www.startrek.com/article/new-star-trek-series-premieres-january-2017)

I have mixed feelings being excitement and apprehension. I’m excited that Star Trek is coming back to television, really where it does best. And I’m hopeful that it will be great. The fact they have Bryan Fuller as showrunner is reason for hope. In addition to Hannibal and Pushing Daises, he was responsible for many of the best episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. They also have announced that Nicholas Meyer is a writer on the show. He was responsible for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, partially responsible for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and responsible for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. With talent like this, CBS is certainly not messing around.

I’m also excited about the rumours that it will be set in the prime timeline instead of the JJ-verse timeline. Though, given the fact that Paramount owns the Star Trek movie rights and CBS owns the TV rights, it makes sense. The rumours also say that it will be set immediately after Undiscovered Country. Or at least the first season will be. There are talks that the new series might be anthology-based, with each season in a different area and time. This could be interesting.

Amidst the excitement, there is also apprehension. Enterprise had such promise, and they dropped the ball. (At least until the last season.) But these people at the helm give me a lot of hope for it.

There are some things I’d like to see. One, I would really like it if it wasn’t the Enterprise again. Except maybe if they want to do stories with the Enterprise-B or -C. What would be even better is if they had a female or, even better, and alien captain. That Klingon in Undiscovered Country (I forget her name) was right. With all the talk about multi-culturalism, the Federation is still a very humans-only club. It would be nice to see some more diversity. That’s one of the things that was really good about DS9.

So, we’ll just have to see. I’ll give the first season a chance. I’m too much a fan of Babylon 5 to stop after only a few episodes, and too much a fan of Star Trek to not give it a chance to fly.

An Odd Hero

I had a friend over yesterday, and I got to tell a cool story again. This got me thinking about autistic characters in fiction and how well they are portrayed, but that’s getting a little ahead of myself.

This friend asked about some of the framed pictures I have on my wall that are signed prints of different actors and a writer. The one in question is of Mary Lynn Rajskub.

Why is this comedian and actor so important? Because of her character Chloe O’Brian on 24.

(A side note: I intend to include 24 in my planned feature of per-episode review and commentary on a rewatch. I just don’t know if I want to start with that one or not.)

Why then would a fictional character be important to me? Because Chloe is one of the few characters I could really identify with. Even though it was never official that Chloe was on the autism spectrum, she had many of the same problems relating to people that I have, a similar intelligence, a similar sense of humor, and a similar fierce loyalty to those she considers friends. I could never be Jack Bauer, but I could be Chloe. The character also gave me hope for myself to see someone with Asperger-like personality traits to be portrayed positively instead of for laughs like on a certain popular sit-com. Chloe was successful in her professional life, becoming a valued coworker and an even more valued friend to a select few. She also became successful in her personal life. After a couple of tries, she finds someone who can understand and accept her as she is. In my personal life, I’m still waiting on the second part of that.

A few months ago, I took a special trip down to Austin to go see Mary Lynn in person on her comedy tour. While there, I got to meet her briefly and tell her what Chloe means to me and thank her for creating that character. She seemed to appreciate it. She said that she had heard from many people about if Chloe was autistic, or more specifically Asperger’s; but she had never heard that from someone on the spectrum himself.

It’s a memory I hope doesn’t soon fade.

This is when I met Mary Lynn Rajskub in Austin.