Soul-less Sci Fi

I hate CGI and shiny surfaces; films sculpted out a block of marbled perfection, road tested by preview audience robots.

This is not the sccience fiction creation I aspire to.

I like rubber and latex suits where you can see the zip up the back, I like models where you can see the dinky drilled holes and the hairdryer parts and cannibalised airfix model kits.

I like planets with stupid names and pinky orange matte painted skies; where the mad scientist holds court amidst the fearsome buzz of Tesla Coils and robots menace damsels with heads made of an anglepoise lamp. I like rubber rocks being thrown, I like the papery thwack of collapsing polystyrene sets.

I like spaceships that look like breasts or phalluses with a November 5th sparkler providing the propulsion; I like craft with pointless wings in the unforgiving vacuum of space that emit sounds that you shouldn't hear in the void.

I like creatures that are tentacled entities of frightening antipathy towards the human race; or the occasional interplanetary policeman telling us to stop fucking about with atomic weapons especially if they have massive foreheads and strange hair.

I like grit. I like dirt. I like being able to see the fucking join. I like mistakes, failure and fun. I like being entertained.

And in modern sci fi, I get dazzled. And more often than not, I get bored.

OPINION - Richard B. Riddick

Every so often I check in on IMDB or Wiki or whatever, to find out what the latest progress on the next Riddick film is.

Now, as I read somewhere else, Vin Diesel now looks like Tony Hart's plasticine pal Morph, but Riddick was a fantastic creation that made him a star. Pitch Black was a superior and innovative B Picture. The Chronicles of Riddick like David Lynch's Dune was hampered by some daft scripting and terrible acting - not by Mr Diesel himself - but was fantastically designed and conceptualised. The section set on Crematoria and in the choking sulphorous prison was great.

My problem with it was that it was just not from the same universe as Pitch Black. That said, I thought the Necromogers were fascinating, and was looking forward to seeing how Riddick's apparent rise to Lord Martial would develop, and whether we would see the Underverse.

Well, we've apparently all died before our due time. The latest little bit  googling reveals that Riddick 3, or simply "Riddick" seems to be a stripped down affair, with some odd sounding casting for a major release - Katee Sackhoff, former WWE superstar Batista?  - with Riddick stranded on an alien world fighting monsters and mercenaries. We're back in a Pitch Black universe, by the looks of things.

Karl Urban's back, although I'm not surprised that Thandie Newton isn't.

It maybe that we will see Furya and Underverse in two mooted sequels, but I'm guessing the backers want to see if the Riddick character flies, financially speaking, before going larger scale.

I hope it does. I love these movies. There's something a shade different about Riddick's universe that deserves a bigger audience.

OPINION -The Dreaded Maximillian

I always think that Maximillian, the rotor twirling, Anthony Perkins drilling (not that way) crimson terror of Disney's The Black Hole is one of the more satisfying, and genuinely frightening, robot designs of sci fi - and horror for that matter.

As a child, I always imagined him chasing me down corridors aboard the Cygnus. How could I get away? If I turned the corner quick enough would he miss me?

Or would I end up having my intestines blended by those fearsome blades of of his?

Firefly versus Farscape

Someone I know is being indoctrinated into Firefly.

THis is a good thing. Firefly was a great show, gritty, low tech - which I love - well written and well acted by the usual Joss Whedon suspects. It is superior to the Serenity movie, which despite the addition of Chiwetel Ejiofor looks far too shiny. Far too shiny indeed.

Nonetheless it's a superior piece of Cult TV, and I really wish I hadn't given the DVDs back to the guy I borrowed them from.

However when I tried the same trick myself, on the same person, with Farscape, with the fun and jolly "Crackers Don't Matter" the response was all a bit "meh". I loved Farscape the moment I saw it, was gutted when it was cancelled despite the fact that after Series 2 it lost its way a little and turned too much into the Ben Browder show on occasion.

"A bit meh" - I was hurt and offended I can tell you. Wonderful characters, genuinely inhuman creatures - not just people with wrinkles stuck on their noses (Guilty as charged, Star Trek TNG) - Scorpius, the greatest camp villain since Servalan from Blakes 7, and settings just not found elsewhere.

I don't understand how any geek or nerd could not like Farscape!